Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was interrogated by a Polish prosecutor in Gdansk for challenging the government’s voter turnout figures in recent elections, but sources in the banned trade union said Walesa refused to answer questions. The sources said Walesa handed the prosecutor a statement in which he said: “I can be put on trial, but nobody will shut my mouth. I will continue to struggle for the rights of the workers in Poland.” Walesa is accused of slander for saying that Solidarity monitors found the turnout for October elections to be 60%, not 79% as reported by the government. He was told to appear for questioning again today.
While General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s reception at Elysée Palace on Wednesday continued to shake France’s governing Socialists, his meeting with President Francois Mitterrand was being hailed by the official press here as a major triumph for the Polish leader and his proclaimed policies of normalization. “And so the spirit of Geneva has finally arrived over Paris,” declared the front-page headline of Trybuna Ludu, the Communist Party newspaper in Warsaw, The paper went on to say that the meeting — General Jaruzelski’s first official encounter with a Western head of state in a Western capital since martial law was imposed in Poland in December 1981 — had opened a new chapter in relations between the two countries. The meeting came just two days before the scheduled arrival here of Willy Brandt, the former West German Chancellor, who is, like Mr. Mitterrand, a stalwart of the Western European left. There was no mention in the Polish press of French reports that General Jaruzelski had arrived at the palace and departed by a back door, ostensibly for security reasons, or that the owner of a Seine sightseeing boat had refused to take the general’s party on a cruise out of sympathy for the outlawed Solidarity movement.
An unusual public disagreement between President Francois Mitterrand and his Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, has created a political storm in France, with many commentators and officials asserting that the Socialist Government is deeply divided. The disagreement emerged when Mr. Fabius, in what many here characterized as an astonishing gesture for a French Prime Minister, said in the National Assembly that he was “personally troubled” that Mr. Mitterrand met here Wednesday with the Polish leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Mr. Fabius’s critical remarks on Wednesday seemed highly unusual in a country where the Prime Minister presumably serves at the pleasure of the President. They also added to an impression widely held in this country that the Socialists, facing likely defeat in parliamentary elections in March, have been floundering as they have tried to reverse a decline in popularity.
Britain will withdraw from UNESCO at the end of this year, the Government announced, charging that the organization was inefficient, harmfully politicized and “has been used to attack those very values which it was designed to uphold.” Last December, the British served notice, as required by law, of their intention to withdraw from UNESCO, complaining about what they viewed as an anti-Western stance. They also complained that UNESCO spends 70 percent of its budget at its Paris headquarters, rather than in the field. But until today, the British had left open the possibility they would change their minds if UNESCO made major changes.
The likelihood of an early breakthrough in the 12-year-old talks here on reducing conventional forces seemed to recede today, after the Soviet bloc reacted with extreme reserve to a new proposal by the United States and its allies to end a longstanding deadlock. In a statement, the head of the Soviet delegation, Valerian V. Mikhailov, said the plan “would be, naturally, carefully studied.” But he added that it “does not give cause for optimism.” Soviet officials indicated, however, that the plan was not being rejected outright. But they said it had been presented “five minutes before the train departs” and had to be examined more carefully before East bloc governments could reply.
American and Soviet scholars signed an exchange agreement in Moscow today that they said would significantly expand academic cooperation. Among other things, it includes the first Soviet-American research project in Judaic studies, an exhibition on North Pacific peoples, and cooperative research on communications technology and its impact on society. More than a hundred joint research groups were established, covering international relations, literature, law, history, philosophy, economics, geography and psychology. Although the agreement is separate from a cultural exchanges accord still being negotiated by the two governments, Soviet officials and Western diplomats said it was the first step toward improved relations to result indirectly from the recent meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.
The Soviet Union has told nine separated family members of American citizens that they may leave the country for the United States, the State Department said today. The department said it welcomed the action, linking it to the statement at the summit meeting in Geneva last month in which President Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, were said to have “agreed on the importance of resolving humanitarian cases in a spirit of cooperation.” Shortly before the summit meeting, American officials received word from the Soviet Government that it planned to permit reunification of the divided families — eight spouses of Americans and one son of a United States citizen — in an apparent good-will gesture by Moscow.
Yelena G. Bonner, wife of the Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, met with Prime Minister Bettino Craxi today and called the encounter an expression of respect for her husband. “One can only hope that my husband can enjoy in his own country the same respect as in Italy and in many other countries around the world,” Mrs. Bonner said.
Bishops were enthusiastic over a new draft message strongly endorsing the work of the Second Vatican Council and calling on Roman Catholics to fight for peace and social justice. But the bishops, at the Synod in Rome, remained divided over whether to publish a second document, an independent account of their proceedings, which would mark an assertion of a stronger role for bishops in relation to the Vatican.
Members of Parliament recommended tonight that Britain and France choose a tunnel rather than a bridge to link their countries across the English Channel. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Francois Mitterrand are due to sign a treaty early next year realizing a centuries-old dream of connecting Britain to the Continent over the 21-mile waterway.
Great Britain performs a nuclear test at the American test site in Nevada.
U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar criticized as “unwarranted” a statement by a high Palestinian official that Leon Klinghoffer may have been pushed overboard from the hijacked ship Achille Lauro by his wife so she could collect life insurance. Farouk Kaddoumi, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s permanent U.N. observer, made the comment at a luncheon attended by Perez de Cuellar.
Egyptian and Israeli officials wound up three days of talks on their sovereignty dispute over the 250-acre beach enclave of Taba in the Sinai Peninsula and agreed to hold another round of talks next week in Israel. After a two-hour final session in Cairo, Egyptian delegate Abdel-Halim Badawi called the talks “very useful and constructive.” He refused to say whether progress was made toward resolving the dispute.
The bodies of two Arabs who had been slain were found by Israeli police today in an orchard 15 miles west of here. The two men, whose names were not made public, were 29 and 31 years old and were from the West Bank, the police said.
A political furor broke out in Israel today over the arrest Wednesday of two Israeli officials accused of fraudulent Arab land sales to Jews in the occupied West Bank. Legislators from the right-wing Likud bloc said politics was behind the investigation into purported land frauds during the former Likud Government’s drive to settle Jews in the territory.
President Reagan attends a National Security Council meeting to discuss the hostage situation in Lebanon.
Kuwait rejected a request by Anglican envoy Terry Waite for a visit in his bid to win the release of four Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. “The Beirut kidnapers, believed to be Muslim extremists, have said they want to exchange the Americans for 17 Shia Muslims jailed in Kuwait for bombings there. In Beirut, the Christian Voice of Lebanon radio said Kuwait does not want Waite to visit because it could be taken as a sign of giving in to the kidnappers.
The State Department called on Syria to join the Mideast peace process and noted that one objective of new negotiations would be the return to Syria of Israeli-occupied territory. Department spokesman Bernard Kalb reiterated the U.S. position that U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 “applies to all fronts involved in the 1967 war, including the Golan Heights, and that Syria has a place in the peace process, if it wishes to participate.” During a visit to Amman this week, Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy was told that Jordan feels “very strongly” that Syria should be included in the peace process.
Iraq said its planes flew 120 sorties against Iranian positions on the south-central war front today amid reports from both sides that Iran was preparing to mount a new ground offensive. The raids were the heaviest reported by Iraq in several months, and the daily war communique said they caused heavy casualties and damage. Iraq’s Defense Minister, General Adnan Khairallah, toured the same sector of the front Wednesday and vowed that Iranian troops would be left as “torn-up corpses and their equipment in piles of rubble and ash.” Previous raids of this size have been aimed at preventing Iranian buildups for an offensive.
The United States is likely to formally advise the United Nations that it is willing to act as a guarantor of an Afghan peace settlement that includes a Soviet withdrawal, United States officials said today. The officials, who asked not to be identified, said a written offer would probably be sent to the United Nations before the next round of talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Geneva on December 16. Previously, they said, Washington has told the United Nations only orally it was willing to act as guarantor. The officials said Washington had decided to make the move to test what was seen by some United States officials as a new flexibility on the issue shown by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, during his summit meeting with President Reagan last month in Geneva.
Philippine opposition leaders indicated they had united behind the candidacy of Corazon C. Aquino, the widow of the assassinated opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who will oppose President Ferdinand E. Marcos in national elections scheduled for next year. The opposition figures made it clear that Salvador H. Laurel, a former senator who had been the first opposition leader to announce his candidacy for President, had accepted the offer of the vice presidential spot on a ticket headed by Mrs. Aquino. Mr. Laurel told reporters today that the two candidates, who have been meeting privately to seek a unified slate, would hold a joint news conference on Sunday. He said the news conference would announce “the official candidate of the united opposition.”
$100 million in U.S. military aid to the Philippines has been wastefully spent and the United States is limited in its ability to trace or influence how assistance funds are used, according to sources familiar with a preliminary Congressional report.The report also said that changes had been made recently to correct some problems, but that it was too early to evaluate the effects, the sources added. The findings are contained in a classified draft report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, and were presented Tuesday in a closed briefing to the investigations subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, according to Congressional sources. The report comes at a time when Congress is completing deliberations on next year’s aid appropriation for the Philippines. The report is one of several inquiries into aid to Manila.
Some Australians probably got cancer from the fallout from British nuclear tests in the 1950s, and excessive radioactive contamination still exists at the Australian test sites, a government-appointed commission said in Canberra. It called on Britain to clean up the sites so aborigines can return to their homelands. Britain exploded 12 nuclear bombs above ground in southern Australia and on islands off western Australia, conducting the tests “without any scientific knowledge of the hazards involved,” the commission said.
The State Department’s top Latin America official said today that Cuban military advisers had become increasingly involved in combat operations against rebel forces in Nicaragua. Testifying before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, said, “You now have Cubans fighting, not just in Africa, but on the mainland of North America.” He confirmed a report that the largest Nicaraguan rebel group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, shot down a Soviet-built MI-8 helicopter on Monday and that two Cubans were among the 14 casualties. Mr. Abrams said there were about 2,500 Cuban military advisers in Nicaragua, “and they aren’t just advisers.”
The United States and Honduras have agreed to begin a military engineering exercise next month that will involve construction of a 12.5-mile road, the Pentagon said today. The exercise, which will last five and a half months and is to be code-named General Terencio Sierra ’86, will be the first in which military engineers from the United States Army National Guard take part, the Pentagon said in a statement. Earlier exercises, including one in the same region that ended in September, have involved the deployment of active-duty engineering units. National Guard forces have previously taken part in exercises involving infantry, armor, artillery and medical units.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wary of human-rights abuses by security forces, today approved a restrictive one-year program to train civilian police in Central America to combat terrorism. The $22 million program prohibits any training for Government military police, viewed by many committee members as the worst abusers of human rights in the region.
South African police using whips and tear gas broke up candlelight vigils for imprisoned anti-apartheid activists and dispersed thousands of mourners at a black girl’s funeral in Soweto, witnesses said. In Pretoria, a spokesman for the national police said the vigils at a church in Bellville South, led by the Rev. Allan Boesak, were illegal, and police moved in after their warnings were ignored.
Winnie Mandela was admitted to a Johannesburg clinic Wednesday night and a clinic spokesman said today that she was “extremely tired” but not suffering from a serious condition. Ismail Ayob, a lawyer for Mrs. Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist and wife of the jailed black leader, Nelson Mandela, said that she had “not been feeling too well recently” and had gone into the clinic on the advice of her doctor. Clinic officials said that she could be discharged by the weekend. “She is extremely tired and needs a rest,” a clinic spokesman said. “She is not in any serious condition. The clinic will not be issuing any formal health report about her. She’s here to relax.”
House and Senate negotiators, who had hoped they were near agreement on a bill to mandate a balanced budget by 1991, hit a snag this evening. After an hourlong meeting of House and Senate leaders, the major differences still unresolved were what programs for the poor should be exempt from automatic spending cuts under the bill and how much Medicare, the health care program for the elderly, would be cut. The House negotiators made a compromise offer on Medicare and programs for the poor. Republican and Democratic senators on the conference committee met this evening, and Republican senators decided not to accept the offer. Several Republicans then met with House Democratic negotiators to make a counteroffer.
Social Security disability rolls will again be reviewed, the Reagan Administration announced, saying it wanted to determine if the 2.6 million recipients were still entitled to receive benefits. Margaret M. Heckler, the departing Secretary of Health and Human Services, who halted the reviews in April 1984, said today that they would resume next month. Federal judges, governors and members of Congress from both political parties harshly criticized the earlier reviews, charging that thousands of people eligible for benefits had been improperly removed from the rolls. Since then Congress has unanimously passed legislation overhauling the disability program. Today the Social Security Administration issued rules to interpret and carry out the 1984 law.
President Reagan travels to New York City, New York to attend the 30th Anniversary dinner of the National Review magazine.
A conference committee’s effort to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the 1985 farm bill got under way today amid promises from both sides to seek compromises. But it was apparent from the start of proceedings this afternoon that the conference would be marked by long delays and bitter disputes. The conference, presided over by Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is working from a 168-page summary of differences between the two bills. Only two differences were resolved in the two-hour opening session. Four others were set aside, and a group of lawmakers led by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, left the room to consider in private the dairy price support provisions in the pending bills.
U.S. service jobs have risen sharply over three years, according to the Government. It is expected to report today that the United States has created 10 million new jobs since the current business expansion began in December 1982. In contrast, employment in Western Europe is the same as it was a decade ago.
An experimental cancer treatment reported Wednesday by scientists of the National Cancer Institute evoked cautious enthusiasm among research doctors. Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg, the leader of the institute’s research team, said the treatment, which prompts white blood cells to attack cancer cells, “is a promising first step in a new direction, but it is not a cancer cure in 1985.”
Van Gordon Sauter replaced Edward M. Joyce as president of CBS News, the network announced. Mr. Sauter’s return to his former post was seen as an attempt to enhance the news division’s position within CBS.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said today that the United States might have the ability to deploy an antimissile shield using ground-based laser weapons as early as the mid-1990’s. Addressing a seminar of West German and United States military officers, he said there had been breakthroughs in research on the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars.” Experiments in Hawaii have resulted in a method of removing the effects of the atmosphere on lasers and showing that high-quality beams can be projected into space in any weather, he said.
Changes for Boeing 747 airliners were proposed by the National Transportation Safety Board. The changes are designed to protect against structural breaks like those that most experts believe led to the crash of a Japan Air Lines jumbo jet in August that took 516 lives. The crash occurred after the plane suddenly lost cabin pressure and a huge section of the vertical tail blew off.
Explosions rocked oil refineries in California and Louisiana yesterday, igniting fires that killed five workers and injured scores of others, including six who were critically burned. Two workers were killed and 45 others were injured when an explosion at the Atlantic Richfield Company refinery in Carson, California, 15 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, shook a neighborhood and shot flames 500 feet into the air. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, a hydrogen compressor at the Citgo Oil refinery exploded and ignited a flash fire that killed three workers who were trying to repair it, said R. J. Carleton, the plant manager. Two other workers suffered minor burns.
A federal jury in Chicago awarded the manufacturer of Viceroy cigarettes $5.05 million in damages in a libel suit against CBS Inc. and a popular television commentator. The jury assessed the damages against Walter Jacobson, a commentator on WBBM-TV, and CBS, which owns and operates the station. The jury had found the defendants guilty of libel on Nov. 26, when it ruled that Jacobson, who anchors the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. news, libeled the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. in a 1981 commentary in which he said the cigarette maker was trying to lure children to smoke with advertising equating the habit with alcohol, sex and drugs.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, responding to Democrats’ complaints that the Reagan Administration is trying to pack the U.S. court system with conservative zealots, agreed to slow down the process for reviewing judicial nominees. Mark Goodin, spokesman for committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina), said the panel decided in closed session to establish a minimum four-week period for reviewing the qualifications of nominees-three weeks for study before a public hearing and one week between the hearing and a vote.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today that an unborn boy killed when an alleged drunk driver crashed into his mother’s car was not a human being under state law. The high court, in a 6-1 ruling, agreed that a trial court properly dropped a charge of “vehicular homicide” because a fetus is not a human being. John Soto, accused of driving while intoxicated, crashed into a car driven by Janet Anne Johnson, who was 8 ½ months pregnant, at a St. Paul intersection November 8, 1984. The male fetus died of head injuries.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, dealing a setback to pro-choice advocates, unanimously upheld the state’s right to deny Medicaid funds for most abortions. The court, in a 7-0 ruling, said a section of the state’s 1982 Abortion Control Act denying the Medical Assistance payments for abortions did not violate Pennsylvania’s constitution. The court said a woman’s right to an abortion does not guarantee the right to state funds, even when the state “chooses to subsidize alternative constitutional rights.”
Negotiators for seven supermarket chains in southern California met with striking teamsters today after making their first new offer since the strike began a month ago. “There is a little progress being made,” said Dan Swinton, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, “but not enough to get too encouraged about.” David Willauer, a management spokesman, would not say if Wednesday’s offer retreated from its demand for a two-tier pay scale, reportedly the most divisive issue in the strike. Seven grocery chains with more than 900 stores from San Luis Obispo to San Diego are involved in the sometimes-violent strike and lockout of the teamsters union, which represents truckers and warehouse and office workers, and the United Food and Commercial Workers, representing meat cutters.
A Palestinian stowaway aboard a Liberian vessel who jumped ship twice into the Mississippi River — and swam a mile in handcuffs the second time — told federal agents he wants political asylum in the United States. Mohamad Marie, 20, was interviewed at the New Orleans office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service but only briefly because “he’s exhausted,” an INS official said. Attorney David Kattan, who took the case for the American Immigration Lawyers Assn., said Marie was born in Damascus into a Palestinian family. His passport is Syrian and lists him as a refugee, Kattan said.
The Justice Department announced today that it had ordered recent attacks on Arab-Americans to be investigated under the Civil Rights Act. A spokesman for the Justice Department, John V. Wilson, Jr., said the directive had been transmitted to the civil rights desk of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is already investigating one of three incidents — the death on October 11 of Alex Odeh, an official of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, in a bomb explosion at his office in Santa Ana, California.
An expert on welfare state sociology has decided to return to the Harvard faculty more than five years after she accused the university of sex discrimination in denying her tenure. “I am pleased to know my fate,” Professor Theda R. Skocpol told the Harvard Crimson on Wednesday after formally accepting tenure with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. After studying the case for three years, Derek Bok, president of Harvard, decided last December to offer her a tenured professorship. She did not send a letter of intention to accept it until late last month. Professor Skocpol had taught at Harvard for five years as an assistant or associate professor when the all-male sociology department refused her tenure in 1980. She filed a grievance charging the department and the university with sexual discrimination. A three-member commission of Harvard professors investigated her charges and ruled that discrimination played a part in her tenure rejection.
Carroll E. Cole, a condemned murderer facing the last hours before his execution, talked with an investigator today about one of the 14 or 15 killings he says he committed for revenge against an abusive mother. Mr. Cole, who has said he has “messed up my life so bad that I just don’t care to go on,” was scheduled to die Friday at 2 AM Pacific standard time by injection at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. Although convicted of killing two women in Nevada and three in Texas, the 47-year-old drifter had formally confessed to 13 killings and had told a psychiatrist that he killed 35 people, all but one of them a woman. In his final interview Wednesday, he scaled that back to 14 or 15 murders. He met today with an investigator from the District Attorney’s office in San Diego County who questioned Mr. Cole about a woman he said he had killed. She was not identified by prison officials.
In a new attack on air pollution and acid rain, seven states, including New York and Connecticut, and four environmental groups filed a suit in New York yesterday charging the Environmental Protection Agency with violating the Clean Air Act. The suit says the Federal agency failed to obey a requirement to update its 1971 standards for allowable levels of sulfur oxide pollution. The plaintiffs said the E.P.A. had not done so even though the agency’s studies show that existing standards endangered health and failed to curb the environmental damages of acid rain, which were documented only over the last 15 years. Sulfur and nitrogen oxides produced in burning coal and in other industrial processes are taken aloft by air currents and rain down on the earth in acidic particles in other parts of the country.
Domestic terrorism remains low while terrorist attacks on Americans abroad are increasing. The political conflicts that have fostered attacks overseas have rarely intruded into this country.
Wild deer and antelope from Asia have escaped from captivity and are rapidly spreading over much of Texas. Wildlife biologists say these hardy “exotics,” as ranchers call them, are driving out the native white-tailed deer and are damaging valuable grazing land.
Sam Shepard’s stage drama “A Lie of the Mind” opens off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, NYC.
The Dow Jones industrial average touched the 1,500 mark for the first time. It remained there briefly, before investors took profits and sent the blue-chip average below where it started the day, down 1.49 points, to 1,482.91. Big Board trading totaled 181 million shares, the fourth heaviest volume ever.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1482.91 (-1.49)
Born:
Frankie Muniz, American actor (“Malcolm in the Middle”), in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey.
Josh Smith, NBA power forward and small forward (Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers, New Orleans Pelicans), in College Park, Georgia.
Brandon Siler, NFL linebacker (San Diego Chargers, Kansas City Chiefs), in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Nico Verdonck, Belgian racing driver, in Brussels, Belgium.
History Diaries 