The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution condemning “all acts of hostage-taking and abduction” and demanding the immediate release of all such captives worldwide. The action follows a somewhat similar resolution adopted by the General Assembly on December 9. The council resolution requires states in whose territory victims of kidnappings are held to “take urgently all appropriate measures to secure their safe release and to prevent the commission of hostage-taking and abduction in the future.” The resolution, initiated by the United States and drafted in closed-door sessions, was endorsed unanimously by all 15 members. It is binding on all countries in the United Nations.
After a quick introductory visit to Eastern Europe, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that he believes “there is a lot of potential motion” for change in that area, but it will be “a slow, subtle and difficult process.” In a news conference as he flew back to Washington from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the last stop on his visit, Mr. Shultz was cautious in discussing future American policy toward the Warsaw Pact countries. He seemed eager to dispel the view that American actions in themselves could bring about significant or quick change in the Warsaw Pact, which for the most part is dominated by the Soviet Union. After his arrival he went to the White House to report to President Reagan on his nine-day trip to Europe and other foreign policy issues.
U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that when he erupted in anger at remarks by the Yugoslav Foreign Minister on Tuesday, “I was very much really speaking for the American people.” During a joint news conference in Belgrade with Foreign Minister Raif Dizdarevic, Mr. Shultz pounded his fist for emphasis and became red-faced after Mr. Dizdarevic seemed to suggest that the hijacking by Palestinians of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in October could be justified by the frustrations of the Palestinians. When asked to explain why he had been so emotional, Mr. Shultz told reporters on his Air Force plane returning to Washington today: “I just want people to see that in the United States, we feel very strongly about the subject, increasingly so. “So I felt that making an interjection at that point, I was very much really speaking for the American people,” he said.
Bonn’s interest in “Star Wars” was confirmed by Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s center-right coalition. It announced that Economics Minister Martin Bangemann would go to Washington next month to negotiate over a role for West German industry in a space-based missile defense system, officially known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. At its last meeting before the Christmas break, the Cabinet agreed on a mandate for Mr. Bangemann that amounted to a compromise between Mr. Kohl, who supports the American defense program, and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who is known to have serious doubts about it. A Government statement said Mr. Bangemann, who is the chairman of the small Free Democratic Party, would negotiate “an improvement in the general conditions for the mutual transfer of the results of scientific research and technological information.”
A Soviet literary journal printed a heavily edited version of a speech by the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko that called for candor and openness in Soviet literature. The version published by the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta, a main organ of the Soviet Writers’ Union, left out several major sections of Mr. Yevtushenko’s remarks, including all references to Stalin’s purges, the evils of collectivization, the privileges of the elite and all but one comment appealing for an end to censorship. Although the published version did not completely obscure the bold tone of Mr. Yevtushenko’s speech, it muted and blunted his comments.
Three prominent opposition activists were detained by the police in Warsaw today after their apartments were searched, family members and associates said. The three, Henryk Wujec, Jacek Szymanderski and Anatol Lawina, were members of a committee of former political detainees that began a nationwide “Political Prisoners Week” last month to press demands for the release of all political prisoners. Jacek Kuron, a leading opposition intellectual, said their work on the committee was apparently the reason for their being detained. He said a search warrant presented to Mr. Lawina referred to a section of the penal code that covers illegal activities aimed at “causing public unrest.” The article carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Mr. Wujec’s wife, Ludwika, said the police confiscated some papers after searching the family’s apartment for more than two hours this morning and then took her husband into custody. “They came with a prosecutor’s search warrant but it did not specify the case,” Mrs. Wujec said in a telephone interview. Under Polish law, people can be detained for up to 48 hours without being formally placed under arrest. A woman answering the phone at Mr. Szymanderski’s apartment said he had been detained by the police after a search this morning. She declined to give her name.
Twenty-three policemen and several demonstrators were hurt today as a wave of violent protests against the death of a Basque arrested by the paramilitary Civil Guard swept northern Spain, officials said. In Pamplona, where the man, Mikel Zabalza, was buried, protesters hurled firebombs and fought the police for three hours. Officials said riot policemen fired 800 rubber bullets and made nine arrests. They said 22 policemen were wounded. A policeman was injured and 32 people were detained in Bilbao where demonstrators blocked roads into the city with burning barricades. Mr. Zabalza’s body was found floating in the River Bidassoa 19 days after he disappeared while in custody.
The United States began talks today with Greek and Turkish officials in Cyprus in a new attempt to aid negotiations aimed at reunification of the two communities there, officials said. James Wilkinson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South European Afairs, arrived Tuesday after visits to Athens and Ankara. Mr. Wilkinson met with President Spyros Kyprianou and said said he was preparing to visit later today with Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres flew to Geneva early today for an unannounced meeting with President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, after which the two leaders announced their intention to restore diplomatic relations. David Kimche, the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, read a joint statement from the two Presidents announcing that Israel and the Ivory Coast intended to restore diplomatic ties and would seek the consent of their respective Governments, the Israeli radio reported. Mr. Peres told the Israeli radio that getting Cabinet approval was “only a formality.” He also said the Ivoirian leader had agreed to help Israel rebuild its ties with other African nations that have broken off relations in recent years, the radio reported.
King Hussein of Jordan was reported today to have told American officials recently that the conditions imposed by Congress on a sale of arms to his country had undermined his confidence in the United States and its ability to bring about productive peace negotiations in the Middle East. A senior State Department official, briefing reporters, said that the King had made his remarks to a United States delegation in Amman headed by Richard W. Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Mr. Murphy returned December 9 from a three-week trip to the region. The Reagan Administration favors a sale of $1.9 billion worth of jet fighters and antiaircraft missiles to Jordan. In October, the Senate and the House of Representatives approved a measure prohibiting the sale before March 1 unless Jordan begins “direct and meaningful peace negotiations” with Israel.
Former Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella was accused of fraud in Algiers today, two days after starting a campaign for the liberalization of the country’s one-party political system at a news conference in London. According to state auditors, he defrauded the state of $6 million during his tenure as independent Algeria’s first leader from 1963 to 1965, the official press agency said. Mr. Ben Bella was overthrown and jailed by his Defense Minister, Colonel Houari Boumediene, in June 1965. He was released by President Chadli Benjedid in 1980.
In a political setback for Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the governing Congress Party was defeated in elections held Monday in the troubled northeastern state of Assam, according to returns tonight. A new regional group called the Assam People’s Party, organized by leaders of a six-year-old campaign for deportation of millions of immigrants who came from Bangladesh, was winning or leading in nearly half of the state’s districts. The party was expected to lead a coalition government with smaller parties.
China accused the Vietnamese government of stepping up armed provocations along their common border and warned that its troops will “fight back forcefully.” At a news briefing in Peking, Foreign Ministry spokesman Li Zhaoxing said the latest clashes coincide with the start of Vietnam’s eighth dryseason offensive against Pekingbacked resistance forces in Cambodia. The Foreign Ministry statement was the first Chinese acknowledgement of border fighting since early September. The Hanoi government announced earlier this month that its forces had killed more than 470 Chinese soldiers involved in a series of “land-grabbing” attacks.
The Philippines Supreme Court voted 7 to 5 today to allow early presidential elections to proceed as scheduled on February 7, according to three of the judges. Their ruling removes an obstacle that had threatened the election since Mr. Marcos announced it early last month. Eleven petitions before the court had claimed that the election, as structured by Mr. Marcos, was unconstitutional because he did not resign to create a vacancy. “We’ll have an election,” said Justice Venicio Escolin after 12 of the court’s 13 judges met to consider their ruling following two days of hearings. Another Justice, Vicente Abad Santos, said some judges had decided that the election was indeed constitutional, but that others had voted to allow it to proceed because the campaign was already underway and the question was out of the hands of the judiciary.
A bipartisan team of American electoral experts reported today that there were still many technical and political questions to be resolved before free and fair presidential elections could be assured in the Philippines on February 7. The group told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it had doubts about the willingness of the Government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos to deal with the outstanding issues, but it also said there was wide and enthusiastic support among the Philippine population, including the political opposition, for proceeding with the elections. “The situation is poised between hope and despair,” said Allen Weinstein, president of the Center for Democracy, which conducted the study in the Philippines from December 7-14. The six-member delegation went to the Philippines at the request of Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island and the panel’s ranking minority member.
A ferry carrying at least 177 people from Manila to a southern Philippine island sank Wednesday, and the United States Navy said it was able to rescue as many as 50 survivors. Three more passengers from the ferry Ascuncion were picked up earlier by a Philippine Coast Guard vessel. The cause of the sinking was not immediately known. The United States Navy searched for survivors through the night, using an anti-submarine patrol plane. About 12 hours after the ferry sank, the Navy found dozens of survivors in the water. A spokesman at the Subic Bay naval base said “between 47 and 50 people” had been picked up “and there are more in the water.” He did not say how many more survivors were spotted. He said passengers told rescuers there were about 150 passengers and a crew of 27 aboard when the ferry sank.
Bolivia lifted a state of siege imposed three months ago by President Victor Paz Estenssoro to halt a crippling protest strike. During the state of siege, the government arrested about 1,200 union leaders, confining more than 200 of them in remote jungle regions for two weeks, and the military restored transportation and communication services. The strike had been called to protest economic austerity measures that froze public sector wages, removed subsidies on basic food items and sharply devalued the Bolivian peso.
Colombia’s Defense Minister Miguel Vega Uribe announced that 78 bodies showing signs of torture have been found over the past week in common graves in a remote mountain region of southeastern Colombia. Authorities in Tacueyo, in Cauca province, estimated the total might number more than 100. Forensic experts said the bodies showed signs of torture and that most of the victims had been strangled or hanged. Colombia’s M-19 leftist guerrillas issued a statement in which they accused another rebel group, Ricardo Franco, of having carried out the massacre.
Forced migration has killed more than 100,000 people in Ethiopia, a group of Paris-based doctors said. Rony Braumann, president of the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which was expelled from Ethiopia earlier this month after making similar charges, told a news conference in Geneva that refugee centers in Ethiopia resemble concentration camps. Claude Malhuret, director general of the group, said a proposal to move about 1.75 million people could result in the deaths of another 300,000 refugees. A Ethiopian government official, who was at the news conference, dismissed the doctors’ statement as “completely false.”
A white farmer was killed near South Africa’s border with Mozambique, increasing fears of stepped-up guerrilla attacks and retaliatory strikes by the white-minority government against its black-ruled neighbors. In unconfirmed reports, two pro-government newspapers said that guerrillas killed Lukas Marais, 39, and that police found shell casings from an AK-47 assault rifle near the scene. Meanwhile, police reported antiapartheid rioting, but no deaths, in six black townships, which they would not name.
Administration officials said today that they expected the Senate to approve a tax-revision measure next year with greater incentives for business investment than those contained in the bill approved Tuesday night by the House of Representatives. However, Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, the Republican chairman of the Finance Committee, said the Senate bill would not differ much from the version passed by the House. In the aftermath of the House approval of the most comprehensive changes in the tax law since World War II, President Reagan said, “America could feel almost that true tax reform is in its grasp.” The President indicated that House passage should dispel any notions that he was a lame duck and added, “We must move forward from here with all deliberate speed to pass a tax reform bill that will spur economic growth, create jobs and give American families the long overdue tax relief that they deserve.” In an interview, Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d said his main goal in the Senate would be to “improve significantly” the treatment of “depreciation, capital formation and investment incentives.”
Congress today approved two measures that together form the most sweeping alteration in Government farm policy since the Depression. The first bill would reduce Government income and price supports to farmers for the first time since the program was established in 1933. The second would reorganize the nation’s farm credit system and bolster it by allowing tens of thousands of farm foreclosures. Together the measures provide a framework for agriculture, the nation’s largest industrial sector, for the rest of the decade.
House and Senate conferees agreed on a catchall appropriations bill for the rest of the 1986 fiscal year, one of the last hurdles to ending the 1985 Congressional session.
President Reagan, pledging to maintain the nation’s military buildup, said today that balancing the Federal budget by 1991 would require deep cutbacks of what he called “wasteful and unnecessary” domestic programs. In his first detailed statement on the far-reaching budget measure that he signed last week, Mr. Reagan made it clear that he would seek to apply the brunt of the proposed restraints to domestic programs. Mr. Reagan’s proposed budget for the 1987 fiscal year, which begins next October, will be sent to Congress early in February. Aides said Mr. Reagan was especially uneasy that the new law, demanding five years of steady deficit reductions, was being viewed as compelling him to restrain military spending. r. Reagan’s comments today, the aides said, to be followed by further speeches in the next two months on the budget, were designed to affirm his commitment to a military buildup and to lay the groundwork for far-reaching efforts to reduce domestic programs.
The Justice Department has frozen spending for juvenile justice projects because it expects the Office of Management and Budget to ask Congress next month to phase out the programs, sources said. The government sources said that officials overseeing the department’s juvenile justice programs were told Friday not to sign for any more grants to the states, which provide money for runaway shelters and other projects to help delinquent juveniles. The Administration has long sought to eliminate federal programs, such as those for juvenile justice, that it believes are either too expensive for the government or can be handled better by the states or private enterprise.
The Senate voted to ban “designer drugs,” chemicals that mimic the effects of dangerous illegal drugs but slip through loopholes in current federal laws. The legislation, sponsored by Senators Strom Thurmond, (R-South Carolina) and Lawton Chiles (D-Florida), was approved by a voice vote without debate and sent to the House. Unscrupulous chemists can sidestep current laws and regulations by manufacturing substances that are slightly different chemically from heroin, PCP or other illegal drugs but have similar effects.
Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, eliminating a political ghost that has dogged him for 10 years, approved a $331-million tax cut, the biggest in Massachusetts history. Dukakis said the state’s robust economy and projections of a $400-million budget surplus made it possible to phase out a 7.5% surcharge on the state income tax over two years, beginning with the 1986 tax year. Dukakis had approved the tax in 1975.
Kevin M. Tucker, a Brooklyn native who was the agent in charge of the United States Secret Service office here for seven years until his retirement last June, was appointed today as Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner as of January 1. He immediately pledged to be “relentless” in attempting to root out corruption in a Police Department whose reputation has been battered by disclosures of graft and by its performance in the disastrous effort to oust the radical group Move last May 13. Mr. Tucker, who is 45 years old and lives in Medford, N.J., succeeds Gregore J. Sambor, who resigned last month after disclosures about his role in the incident in which 11 people died and 61 homes were destroyed by fire after the police dropped a bomb on a house occupied by members of the radical group Move. Mr. Sambor directed the bombing. Mr. Tucker is the first Commissioner to come from outside the ranks of the department in decades, and for that reason his appointment drew sharp criticism from the police union.
Surgeons for the first time began implanting an artificial heart in a woman, using a version of the Jarvik-7 that is 30% smaller than the plastic and metal pump used in men, a spokesman said at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. The gravely ill 40-year-old Minnesota woman was being given the artificial heart to keep her alive until a human donor heart can be found. If the implant is successful, the woman, who was not identified, would become the first person to receive the smaller Jarvik-7, which can fit into the chest of a patient weighing less than 150 pounds. Seven men have been recipients of the Jarvik-7.
An ex-convict with a zest for work, a violent temper and a fear of flying appears to be a leading candidate to succeed murdered Paul Castellano as boss of the nation’s largest Mafia family, New York law enforcement sources said. Castellano and his bodyguard were shot to death Monday on a busy mid-Manhattan street as they got out of their car in front of a popular restaurant. John Gotti, identified by the law enforcement sources as Castellano’s likely successor, is a capo, or captain, in the Gambino crime family that Castellano headed, according to New York City police and the FBI.
A state law banning exit polling within 300 feet of a voting place is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled in Tacoma, Washington, in a challenge of the law that was brought by two newspapers and the major television networks. U.S. District Judge Jack Tanner ruled the law actually was aimed at preventing postelection projections of voting results. The state had contended the law was an effort to maintain order at voting places.
The F.A.A. ordered unusual checks of jet engine repair facilities operated by major airlines and independent overhaul companies. The eight-week inspections are in response to a rash of accidents, including two fatal airline crashes, involving Pratt and Whitney’s JT8D engine.
A judge declared a mistrial in the three-month racketeering case of Louisiana’s Governor, Edwin W. Edwards, and four co-defendants after the jurors failed to agree on a verdict after deliberating for six days. Officials said the jurors voted heavily in favor of acquittal. The judge, Marcel Livaudais Jr., announced the mistrial after the somber jurors told him they were at an impasse. The defendants and spectators remained silent after the judge announced the mistrial, having been warned against any outburst.
Two Ku Klux Klan leaders and two other people have pleaded guilty to Federal civil rights charges in a series of cross-burnings intended to harass interracial couples. The pleas came just before the scheduled start of the defendants’ trial Tuesday. Charges against three other defendants were dismissed because of technical problems in the indictment, but their cases will be brought before a new grand jury next month, according to Isabelle Thabault, a Justice Department lawyer.
The AIDS virus was detected in the saliva of only one of 71 homosexual men known to be infected with the disease, according to a new study. Scientists said the finding should help allay fears that AIDS could spread through casual social contact.
The countdown was going smoothly for tomorrow’s launching of the space shuttle Columbia. Its crew of seven includes Representative Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the space agency’s budget.
The conviction of Jeffrey MacDonald, a former Army doctor who was found guilty of the 1970 murders of his pregnant wife and two young daughters, was upheld by a Federal appeals court. Dr. MacDonald has been sentenced to life in prison.
A mishap at the Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant here delayed cleanup of the reactor for several hours but did not cause an emergency, a plant spokesman said Monday. A canister being loaded with radioactive fuel debris fell about a foot into the reactor on Saturday, according to the spokesman, Gordon Tomb. He said the canister was retrieved and steps would be taken to make sure the canisters were properly locked into place in the future.
The jury in the trial for the murder of a Washington, D.C. mother of six convicted two defendants today two days after returning guilty verdicts against six others. “Justice has really been served,” said Barbara Wade, the sister of Catherine L. Fuller, a 48-year-old mother who was beaten to death in an alley on October 1, 1984, while 20 people watched.
Americans are giving $2.33 billion to the United Way this year, a record that caps the charity’s best three years in more than a quarter century, officials estimated today. The projected 1985 increase of 9 percent over 1984 for the nation’s 2,200 local United Ways follows gains of 10 percent and 9.5 percent the two years before. The money contributed in the three years was relatively undiluted by inflation, as against dollars given in much of the decade before, officials reported.
The Coast Guard set up a command post today and began planning a two-week cleanup of a major oil spill in the Mississippi River caused when an oil barge struck a railroad bridge. The Coast Guard said 180,600 gallons of crude oil spilled into the river Tuesday when one of nine tow barges struck the bridge 44 miles north of Cairo, Illinois.
A 9-year-old Ohio boy trapped under freezing water for more than 40 minutes was in critical condition today as doctors kept him in a drug-induced coma to forestall brain damage. Jeremy Ghiloni, a third-grader from Madison Township, about 30 miles east of Columbus, was on a respirator to help his breathing, a spokesman at Children’s Hospital said.
A steel beam crashed several floors through an office building under construction near a downtown Los Angeles freeway today, collapsing the structure and killing three workers, officials said. Two workers were hospitalized and six others suffered minor injuries in the accident, which occurred shortly before noon.
The San Francisco Giants trade strikeout-prone slugger Rob Deer to the Brewers for minor leaguers Eric Pilkington and Dean Freeland.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1542.43 (-2.07)
Born:
Gemma Pranita, Thai-born Australian actress (“The Ever After”), in Bangkok, Thailand.
History Diaries 