Britain signed an accord today with the United States allowing it to take part in research on an American missile-defense system. The pact, signed here by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, was the first such agreement that the United States has reached with any of its allies. The two Governments agreed that the terms of the accord would be kept secret “in perpetuity.” But Michael Heseltine, Britain’s Defense Minister, said he was satisfied that there would be “real opportunities, real contracts and real jobs” for British science and industry. A spokesman in Bonn, acknowledging that West Germany had not wanted to be the first nation to sign such an agreement on the research program, said the agreement concluded here would make it easier for his Government to reach a similar accord. On a visit to London last week, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany indicated that his Cabinet would discuss the question this month. The Government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is understood to have begun the complex negotiations by asking for guarantees of contracts of at least $1.5 billion. The guarantees were seen, in part, as a way of offsetting Congressional pressures so British companies would not always be in a weak competitive position in bidding against American companies. Britain also wanted access to all the technology its scientists help to develop.
The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly today to condemn all acts of international terrorism as “criminal.” It was the first time that a resolution dealing with terrorism had ever been passed by the Assembly. The vote was 118 to 1, with Cuba voting against the resolution. Israel and Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta, abstained. Iran was among the 37 nations that did not take part in the vote. The Warsaw Pact countries, Nicaragua and hardline Arab nations supported the resolution, even though they had expressed regret that it did not specifically condemn “state terrorism,” a phrase used in United Nations debates to describe American support of the Nicaraguan rebels and Israeli raids in Arab territory. The compromise resolution, adopted by the Assembly’s legal committee, “unequivocally condemns, as criminal, all acts, methods and practices of terrorism wherever and by whomever committed, including those which jeopardize friendly relations among states and their security.” It also “deplores” the killing of innocent people as a result of terrorism as well as the impact of acts of international terrorism on cooperation among nations.
The United Nations tonight passed resolutions expressing concern for human rights violations in Afghanistan, Iran, Chile, Guatemala and El Salvador. A General Assembly committee approved the resolutions, with the United States abstaining from the resolutions on El Salvador and Guatemala and voting against the Chilean resolution. Patricia M. Byrne, a United States delegate, said that, while human rights violations occur in Chile, the resolution did not recognize “positive developments” there. Approval by the full Assembly of the committee’s actions is routine.
A bomb explosion at a Belgian court building killed a man and wounded two other people today, and officials reported other bombings at NATO fuel installations in Belgium and France. The Fighting Communist Cells organization said it and a left-wing French group carried out the bombings of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization installations. Officials said they were not excluding the possibility that the Fighting Communist Cells might also have been involved in the court building blast at Liege, 65 miles east of Brussels. No one took responsibility for the explosion inside the 16th-century building.
Greece will closely watch elections in Cyprus on Sunday in which a major issue is whether Turkish troops should withdraw. Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou said Greece considered its national interest to be involved in the outcome. “We do not intervene,” Mr. Papandreou said in a two-hour foreign-policy speech in Parliament, “but we must state clearly to the Cypriot people that if they accept a timetable of withdrawal — which would mean that the Turkish troops would never withdraw — we would consider that damaging to the Greek national interest.” “If the Turkish occupation of Cyprus is legalized,” he said, “the threat to the Aegean will become more immediate and menacing. A decision to reach a solution while Turkish troops remain is nationally unacceptable to us. We, for our part, will not agree that there is a solution until the last Turkish occupation soldier leaves.”
A former Italian intelligence chief denied in court today that his agents had persuaded Mehmet Ali Ağca to implicate Bulgaria in a plot to kill Pope John Paul II in May 1981. The official, General Nino Lugaresi, director of the military intelligence department at the time, said that two agents visited Mr. Ağca in jail but that it was the Turkish gunman who suggested the meeting. General Lugaresi said an agent from his department and another from the civilian intelligence agency visited Mr. Ağca after the Turk asked for a meeting, hoping to trade his revelations for a reduction of his life sentence. The two agents “explained to him that the services in Italy do not have such powers,” the general said.
Yelena G. Bonner, the wife of the Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, had a private audience with Pope John Paul II tonight on the eve of her departure for the United States. The Vatican gave no details of the meeting between the Pope and Miss Bonner. A brief statement read by a Vatican spokesman said Miss Bonner “had expressed the desire to see the Holy Father.”
Praise for the Synod in Rome was expressed by the head of United States Conference of Bishops. Bishop James W. Malone said the meeting, which is near its end, had been a resounding success and an endorsement of bishops’ conferences as local voices of the church. He said the Synod had provided “a resounding reaffirmation of the teachings and spirit of the Second Vatican Council.” Asked if the Synod of Bishops could heal the rift between church traditionalists and liberals, Bishop Malone said: “Human attitudes change gradually. Emotions subside slowly.’
Rival militias in Muslim West Beirut are to hand over control of the area to the government authorities under an agreement announced today by Prime Minister Rashid Karami. The mainstream Shiite movement Amal and the predominantly Druze Progressive Socialist Party are to close down their offices and order their gunmen off the streets to make way for the police and a special force of the Lebanese Army, Mr. Karami said. The measures are designed to insure public safety and head off violent clashes such as those that rocked the predominantly Muslim western half of the capital last month.
A civilian-military panel recommended today that a military captain, about 20 militiamen and soldiers and a mayor stand trial for the slayings of at least 21 demonstrators in the central Philippines in September. In a unanimous recommendation filed with the Defense Minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, the fact-finding commission rejected statements that the military acted in self-defense in the incident September 21 on Negros. At least 21 people, mostly unemployed sugar workers, were killed during an island-wide general strike when security forces fired into a crowd of about 2,000 protesters.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the United States might take “further steps” on behalf of anti-Government rebels in Nicaragua. He said the action would be in response to what he called “incontrovertible evidence” that Cuban military advisers had become increasingly involved in combat against the American-backed insurgents. At a news conference, Mr. Shultz was not specific about these “steps.” But he strongly suggested that the Administration might ask for a prompt vote by Congress for military aid to the rebels to supplement the $27 million in what is defined as humanitarian aid permitted by current law.
A Nicaraguan official denied that Cuban military advisers were in combat against anti-Government rebels. Victor Hugo Tinoco, the acting Foreign Minister, accused the Reagan Administration of seeking an excuse to expand aid to the rebels. At the same time, Nicaragua announced that it was recalling its Ambassador to Washington for consultations to protest the rebel downing of a Sandinista transport helicopter Monday in which 14 people were killed. Nicaragua said the helicopter was hit by a missile supplied to the insurgents by the Central Intelligence Agency. The United States denied the charge. President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said the United States was “mining the airspace of Central America and the continent” by providing the rebels with antiaircraft missiles.
Nicaragua’s Mission to the United Nations has asked for a meeting of the Security Council to discuss what it said was increased activity by United States-supported guerrillas, a spokesman said today. Earlier in the day, the General Assembly’s economic committee approved a resolution calling for an end to the United States trade embargo against Nicaragua. The vote was 84 to 4, with 37 abstentions. The United States, Gambia, Grenada and Israel opposed the resolution, which was co-sponsored by Nicaragua, Algeria, Mexico and Peru.
Leftist guerrillas hurled grenades and fired into an army bus in Bogota, Colombia early today, killing two soldiers and wounding eight others, witnesses said. A joint command of several guerrilla groups took responsibility for the attack in calls to local radio stations, saying the raid was in response to the killing two weeks ago of a rebel political chief.
Armed gunmen in Santiago, Chile, stormed into the office of the nation’s leading human rights group and took documents that had been compiled for a United Nations investigation, group members said this week. The group members said the assailants beat the wife of an employee of the Chilean Commission on Human Rights and ransacked the offices in the attack last week. Commission members said that they could not identify the gunmen but that patterns of rights abuses in Chile suggested they might have been operating with the knowledge of the government. Juan Prado, press attaché of the Chilean Embassy in Washington, said charges that those connected to the government were trying to intimidate the group were “silly” and “stupid.”
Angolan rebels said today that they had ambushed a Cuban convoy, killing 28 Cuban soldiers and shooting down 2 Soviet-built helicopters in what the rebels called the first major battle of a new Government offensive in southern Angola. The South Africa-backed rebels of Unita said they “severely attacked” the 230-vehicle Cuban convoy Thursday in southeastern Cuando-Cubango Province as it headed for guerrilla strongholds from the provincial capital of Menongue, according to a rebel statement issued in Lisbon.
The World Council of Churches ended an emergency meeting on South Africa here today by adopting a resolution calling for increased church pressure and mandatory economic sanctions against the Pretoria Government. The strongly worded statement called on Christian churches to support the underground organizations waging guerrilla war against the white-dominated Government. It also urged other nations to prevent the rescheduling of South Africa’s $14 billion international debt and called for the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and all other South African political prisoners. The ecumenical meeting’s closing statement also called for the resignation of President P. W. Botha’s Government, saying: “We regard this as the most appropriate and least costly process of change, as we await a new democratic representative Government in South Africa. We are sure the liberation of South Africa will be liberation for all the people in the country, black and white.”
An official of the World Council of Churches today characterized the discussions with the African National Congress in Zimbabwe as “a very useful exchange of ideas on ways to bring about peace with justice in South Africa.” One participant, an Anglican Archbishop, Philip Russell, said there had been no time for debate at the session. He said, however, that various views had been exchanged.
Meanwhile, Winnie Mandela, an anti-apartheid leader and wife of Nelson Mandela, was reported “resting comfortably” today in a Johannesburg clinic. She was admitted earlier this week for exhaustion on the advice of her doctor.
In other developments, the police in Port Elizabeth said they arrested 13 people in the murder of two black policemen in the township of Kwazakele. The arrests came as two girls, 14 and 16 years old, were released from detention after serving more than two months in solitary confinement. The girls had been held under internal security legislation and were both released without charge.
House and Senate negotiators reached an “agreement in principle” today on legislation to require a balanced budget by 1991, ending a two-month struggle. The legislation, which first passed the Senate in early October, would set a series of declining ceilings on the deficit that would reach zero by 1991. The plan specified that if Congress and the White House could not agree on spending cuts and tax increases to reduce deficits to the annual ceilings, the President would be required to make spending reductions that would fall half in the military budget and half in domestic spending. Social Security, veterans’ pensions, seven programs for the poor and interest on the national debt would be exempt from these automatic spending cuts. The automatic cuts would be limited in several health assistance programs and in Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly.
President Reagan’s chief budget officer hinted today that the Administration would make a new assault on nonmilitary spending next year in an attempt to shrink the budget deficit. James C. Miller 3d, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the Administration could seek to cut projected spending by about $50 billion in the budget it will submit to Congress for the fiscal year 1987, which starts next October 1. Mr. Miller said Mr. Reagan remained committed to a 3 percent rise in military spending on top of an increase to make up for inflation and no rise in taxes. The spending cuts would be designed to achieve a deficit of no more than $144 billion. Mr. Miller said the current O.M.B. deficit estimate for the fiscal year 1986 was over $200 billion. That is more than the $172 billion figure contained in the Congressional budget resolution that was passed in August and more than the recent Congressional Budget Office estimate of $185 billion.
President Reagan meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the impact to national security of further defense budget cuts.
President Reagan meets with Secretary of State George Shultz and Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs John Poindexter.
A conference committee working to resolve differences in the Senate and House farm bills today tentatively approved agricultural research and education programs that could cost up to $6.5 billion over the next five years. More controversial topics were put off until next week. The agreement, regarded by committee members as an encouraging first step toward resolving more difficult disputes, would provide the nation’s agricultural colleges and universities with a sizable percentage of their research and teaching budgets.
A curb on a debt financing device that has been widely used in the latest wave of hostile corporate takeovers has been proposed by the Federal Reserve Board, which fears that the financial world has become top-heavy with debt. Voting 3 to 2, the board proposed that in a typical hostile takeover bid the use of debt be limited to half of the purchase price.
The nation’s overall unemployment rate edged down a tenth of a percentage point last month, to 6.9 percent of the labor force, the Government reported today. That matched the low point of the year, in August, and marked the fourth month in a row that this politically sensitive economic barometer has held at or just below 7 percent. The civilian unemployment rate, which excludes military employment, declined to 7 percent from 7.1 percent.
Thirty members of Congress yesterday sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger urging him to postpone a $30 million test of an X-ray laser weapon because of reported flaws in the experiment’s design. The X-ray device, powered by a nuclear bomb, is a key weapon being developed for President Reagan’s proposed system to defend against enemy missiles. The device is meant to fire powerful beams across space to destroy missiles. The letter, spearheaded by Representative Bill Green, Republican of Manhattan, was prompted by news reports that the next X-ray laser test would be conducted this month at the Government’s underground nuclear test site in Nevada, despite the discovery of technical problems. The code name for the test is “Goldstone.”
With the space shuttle Atlantis back on Earth in good condition after a highly successful weeklong mission, the space shuttle Columbia’s crew ran through a smooth-running practice countdown Thursday to clear the way for a launching December 18. The shuttle is to land at the Kennedy Space Center December 23. The Columbia’s seven-member crew, including Representative Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who is chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees the space agency’s budget, climbed aboard for the final hours of a dress-rehearsal countdown that ended with the computer-simulated ignition of the shuttle’s three main engines.
Closing of most toxic waste dumps has been ordered by the Environmental Protection Agency on the ground that more than two-thirds of such sites have failed to qualify for a permanent operating permit. The E.P.A. said that only 492 of the nearly 1,600 landfills now taking hazardous waste have certified that they meet ground water monitoring and financial responsibility requirements. Sites that did not make such a certification by November 8 must cease operations. The relatively small number of waste sites that could meet legal requirements under the law, which was amended last year to stiffen requirements for safe disposal of hazardous materials, surprised environmental agency officials. Just before the November 8 deadline the agency estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the operating landfills would be unable to comply.
Jerry A. Whitworth, a retired Navy radioman who is a friend of John A. Walker Jr., the confessed Soviet spy, testified in his own espionage case today that he had been subjected to “psychological warfare” by Federal agents who interviewed him before his arrest June 3. “I felt desperate,” said Mr. Whitworth, a 45-year-old resident of Davis, Calif., who has been charged with passing classified materials to Mr. Walker. “I was being bombarded psychologically. I was up against something beyond my control.”
Carroll E. Cole, who confessed 13 killings he said were revenge against his abusive mother, was executed by lethal injection today in Nevada after rejecting appeals because “it would be unbearable to stay on here.” Mr. Cole, a 47-year-old drifter, was pronounced dead at 2:10 AM, six minutes after three deadly chemicals were pumped into his body. He was the first person executed in Nevada since 1979 and the 50th in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Changes in Medicare payments to physicians who treat elderly and disabled people under the program were called for by the Reagan Administration, members of Congress and private health policy experts. The Administration has concluded that Medicare should pay a fixed amount, set in advance, to an insurance company or an insurer that agrees to provide all health-care services. This proposed approach differs sharply from the current system.
The Air Force extended the deadline for bids on a contract to develop a new fighter plane today, thereby keeping open General Dynamics’s chances of competing even though it has been suspended from receiving new Government contracts. At the same time, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said in an interview televised from London that military contractors who defrauded the government “should go to jail.” General Dynamics, one of seven competitors for the fighter plane contract, was suspended Tuesday after the company and four former or present executives were indicted on fraud charges. In another development, the Pentagon’s top procurement official, James P. Wade, has written a stinging appraisal of the Pentagon’s way of developing arms, saying it is “ponderous, inflexible and so layered as to make it virtually impossible to maintain accountability.”
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat suspended publication tonight after a Federal bankruptcy judge said he would appoint a trustee to manage the newspaper’s financial affairs. Judge David P. McDonald said earlier today he hoped to appoint a trustee as early as Monday. The trustee would assume the control of the newspaper. Jeffrey M. Gluck purchased the newspaper in February 1984. Gerald A. Rimmel, a lawyer for the 133-year-old newspaper, said it would be at least a week before it could resume publication. He said the judge’s decision came after the newspaper’s principle lender, a subsidiary of Citicorp, refused to promise to pay the printing companies that print The Globe-Democrat pending the appointment of a trustee.
A fetus is not a human being under state law, the Minnesota Supreme Court said today in a decision that means a man who was accused of killing an 8 ½-month-old fetus in an automobile accident cannot be charged in the death. In a 6-to-1 ruling, the court said no specific state statute deals with the question of whether a fetus is a human being and that the Legislature has never precisely defined the term “human being,” even though it has been used in homicide statutes since territorial days.
Pregnant women infected with AIDS may run a risk as high as 65 percent of passing the infection to their unborn child, the Centers for Disease Control said Thursday in guidelines calling for testing of high-risk women who are or may become pregnant. The guidelines, published today in the centers’ weekly bulletin, avoid any mention of abortion in the case of an infected pregnant woman.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a $6 million fine against Jaguar Cars Inc. today for marketing automobiles that failed to meet federally mandated fuel economy standards. Thomas McDonnell, vice president of public affairs for Jaguar Cars Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Jaguar of England, said the company had agreed to pay the civil penalty. “It is something we agreed would be paid,” Mr. McDonnell said. “We are not protesting the findings.”
Arizona may lead much of the West in growth and tourist allure, but it is struggling to catch up with its neighbors and the rest of the country in one area: development of state parks. Despite Arizona’s size and reputation as a top attraction for vacationers, parks lag far behind the state’s neighbors in both number and size. Nationally, only Delaware, a fraction of the size of Arizona, has fewer state parks. Arizona leaders want to expand the system, saying parks are important to the quality of life in the cities and in rural areas, that they offer a taste of the prosperity growth can bring.
Thousands of coots, apparently taken by surprise when a sudden blast of arctic cold swept through Illinois, have been frozen into a local lake and many will not survive, the authorities say. “It’s one of the oddest sights we’ve ever seen,” said Tony Newton, a forest ranger. The coots, a ducklike, freshwater species of waterfowl with long-lobed, unwebbed toes, became trapped in ice up to 5 inches thick. Mr. Newton said 3,000 to 4,000 coots were stuck at one point on the northern end of Spring Lake, a state park and conservation area about 20 miles southwest of Peoria in central Illinois. “Many of them have suffered so much frostbite on the bodies or wings that they’ll never make it through the winter,” he added.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1477.18 (-5.73)
Born:
Dulce María, Mexican pop singer (RBD) and actress (“Rebelde”), in Mexico City, Mexico.
Darius Washington, NBA shooting guard (San Antonio Spurs), in Winter Park, Florida.
Shannon Bobbitt, WNBA guard (Los Angeles Sparks, Indiana Fever, Washington Mystics), in the Bronx, New York, New York.
Died:
Burleigh Grimes, 92, MLB pitcher (Hall of Fame; World Series 1931 St. Louis Cardinals; NL wins leader 1921, 1928; NL strikeout leader 1921 Brooklyn Robins, Pittsburgh Pirates).
Burr Tillstrom, 68, American puppeteer (Kukla, Fran & Ollie).
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