The Soviet Union offered today to permit the United States some on-site inspection of nuclear test ranges in return for American participation in a test moratorium. Moscow also said it would extend its five-month moratorium on testing beyond the end of the year if Washington agreed to join the halt. The Soviet proposals, which were in an editorial published in Pravda, the Communist Party daily, were immediately rejected by Washington. In Washington, the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said the United States would not join the moratorium. He said that weapons testing was needed to insure the reliability of weapons, and that the Soviet Union could not be trusted to adhere to a ban. The editorial said the Soviet Union “stands for coming to terms with the United States on certain measures of on-site verification to remove the possible doubts about compliance with such a moratorium.”
Senior officials in several Western European countries have privately welcomed Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s nine-day trip to three Eastern European countries as a step toward a more active and differentiated American approach to the area. Although Mr. Shultz’s visit to Rumania, Hungary and Yugoslavia yielded no apparent breakthroughs, policy-makers in several capitals suggested it could lead to a closer alignment of American and Western European strategies toward the Soviet Union’s occasionally restive Warsaw Pact allies and other Communist nations. In London, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described the Shultz trip as a sign that “the practice of American East-West policy has been spreading out recently” from “a policy that was before largely concerned with building up deterrence.”
Italian officials arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, to hear testimony from two Bulgarian diplomats charged with plotting to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. Judge Severino Santiapichi, Deputy Judge Fernando Attolico and Public Prosecutor Antonio Marini want to question Todor Aivazov and Zhelyo Vassilev, about statements made by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Ağca, who was tried and convicted of trying to kill the Pope. Ağca originally said he acted alone but later claimed “a Bulgarian connection” in the assassination plot. Aivazov and Vassilev were both stationed at the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome at the time of the assassination attempt.
An armed man described as a Palestinian guerrilla burst into a courtroom here today and, together with four defendants on trial for robbery, took the judge, jurors and a number of trial observers as hostages. The gunman distributed grenades and revolvers to the defendants, who fired several warning shots and demanded that a French television crew be brought into the building to film a declaration that was later broadcast. More than half of the original hostages, including about 15 law students who were attending the trial, were freed during the day, leaving about a dozen people still held as negotiations went on between the gunmen and the French national police chief, Robert Broussard, who flew here from Paris. A team of police wearing bullet-proof vests was surrounding the courthouse and a 30-member elite unit, specially trained for counter terrorist operations was flown here from Paris, though it remained doubtful whether a rescue operation could be undertaken.
An Irish guerrilla jailed for murder refused food today, beginning what is expected to be a new wave of hunger strikes in this British province. Prison sources said the guerrilla, Robert Tohill, 26 years old, had started a fast “to the death” to protest his conviction Wednesday on the testimony of a self-confessed killer and informer. Mr. Tohill, one of 27 men convicted on the testimony of the informer, Harry Kirkpatrick, refused breakfast after spending his first night in the top-security Maze prison near Belfast. Mr. Tohill was sentenced to life in prison for killing a part-time soldier. The others convicted with him are expected to join the hunger strike at weekly intervals. In 1981, 10 guerrilla prisoners fasted to death to press demands for political status and improved conditions. The fasts led to disturbances and the rise to prominence of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A.
The judge and a prosecutor in the Rome trial over the shooting of the Pope arrived in Sofia today to question two Bulgarian defendants. The two, Todor S. Aivasov and Maj. Zhelyo K. Vasilev, are among three Bulgarians and three Turks on trial in Italy on charges of conspiring with Mehmet Ali Ağca, the convicted gunman, to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. The court president, Severino Santiapichi, and the public prosecutor, Antonio Marini, want to cross-examine the two men — whom Bulgaria has refused to extradite — in the light of trial statements made by Mr. Ağca.
An American legal team has completed questioning Israeli officials in the case of Jonathan J. Pollard, a civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst charged with spying for Israel, an Israeli official said. The four U.S. investigators left Israel after a week of interviews. Neither U.S. nor Israeli officials would say who was interrogated but the team, led by State Department legal adviser Abraham Sofaer, had been expected to interview Rafael Eitan, who reportedly heads a secret unit that controlled Pollard, and Israeli science attaches Ilan Ravid and Yosef Yagur.
Israel installed the first Arab mayor on the occupied West Bank since 1982. Zafer Masri, chairman of the Nablus Chamber of Commerce, said he did not consult Jordan or the Palestine Liberation Organization on his decision to apply for the mayoral post in Nablus-the largest city on the West Bank. In 1982, Israel deposed Mayor Bassam Shaka of Nablus and other West Bank mayors who resisted its occupation of the region, captured from Jordan during the 1967 Middle East War. The cities since have been run by Israeli military-appointed administrators.
Beirut gunmen kidnapped 10 more people in an apparent campaign to drive Christians from the city’s Muslim sector. Police said seven Christians, including three women, were abducted after crossing the dividing line between Christian East Beirut and the Muslim western quarter. Three others were taken while driving on the airport highway in the city’s southern suburbs, which are a stronghold of Shia Muslim fanatics. The abductions heightened fears that radical Muslims have launched a pre-Christmas campaign of intimidation against West Beirut’s dwindling Christian community. Police sources said more than 25 Christians have been seized in recent days.
Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite held secret talks with a senior Kuwaiti envoy in Geneva, a United Arab Emirates newspaper reported. The Sharjah-based daily Al Khaleej said the talks dealt with Waite’s efforts to free four American hostages in Lebanon, whose captors are demanding the release of 17 men jailed in Kuwait for bombings in 1983. It did not name the Kuwaiti envoy. A spokeswoman for Waite said he will return to Beirut today but declined to give any further details of his movements or his negotiations.
Crime in Beirut is rising, threatening the latest security plan, even though the influence of Beirut militias has been curbed. Policemen and regular soldiers have replaced the militiamen on the streets, and Christmas shopping is brisk. Militiamen are off the streets, the resumption of public bus service has added to traffic snarls and although West Beirut is the Moslem part of the Lebanese capital, Christmas shopping there is brisk. But at the same time in West Beirut, the latest security plan is seriously challenged by a rising crime wave and continuing factional tensions. Policemen dressed in new gray uniforms and backed by regular soldiers have been visible since the new security measures came into force about two weeks ago. Prime Minister Rashid Karami, a Moslem who heads a coordination committee that oversees law enforcement in the capital, has proclaimed the security plan a success.
Afghanistan and Pakistan suspended their latest round of peace talks today to study new United Nations proposals aimed at fixing a timetable for withdrawal of Soviet troops backing the Afghan Government. Diego Cordovez, the United Nations mediator between the separated delegations, said the talks would resume in late February or early March. Mr. Cordovez has been pushing a four-point plan to end the Afghan guerrilla war and arrange withdrawal of 115,000 Soviet soldiers. Soviet forces joined the Afghan conflict in December 1979.
A Philippine election should proceed as scheduled on February 7 despite doubts about its constitutionality, the Supreme Court in Manila ruled. The justices were split, 7 to 5. But opposition politicians said they still believed President Ferdinand E. Marcos had several other options for stopping the election should he fear he might lose. The split decision by the court was widely believed to reflect the will of Mr. Marcos. He said today that he welcomed the opportunity to proceed with elections that would lay to rest doubts raised by the “libelous propaganda” of his opponents about his own mandate and the popularity of his Government’s programs.
United States Navy helicopters and sailors rescued more than 70 survivors of a capsized ferry boat from the South China Sea today, bringing to 85 the number of people saved, officials said. Chief Petty Officer Jack Leigh of the United States naval base at Subic Bay said that by late today, six bodies had been brought to the base from the capsizing Wednesday of the Asuncion Cinco. The boat was believed to be carrying about 200 people between Palawan Island and Manila. The approximately 115 still missing are believed dead, the chief petty officer said.
The Salvadoran Air Force has attacked at least five villages in rebel-held regions in recent months in what appears to be a violation of government regulations prohibiting air raids on civilian-occupied areas, according to villagers and evidence of bombing seen by reporters. In addition, the Salvadoran Army appears to be destroying civilian houses, crops and rebel hospitals, apparently in an effort to deny help to rebel combat units and to drive their civilian supporters from regions they control. The rules governing destruction of property by soldiers in villages where rebels live and work do not appear to be well defined. The bombing appears to be restricted almost exclusively to small areas of the country like this one that have been progressively depopulated and are now inhabited almost exclusively by armed rebels and their civilian supporters. In such regions, the armed forces appear to bend the rules governing bombing of towns and destruction of property.
The Reagan Administration said today that a recent traffic accident in Honduras had turned up strong evidence that cars with secret compartments were being used to move military supplies from Nicaragua to Salvadoran guerrillas. Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, displayed photographs and a videotape that the Honduran authorities said they took when they dismantled a car after it was in an accident on the Pan American Highway near La Leona on December 7. He said the bright green Lada car, which is built in the Soviet Union under Fiat license, was carrying 7,000 rounds of ammunition, 86 electric blasting caps, 20 fragmentation grenades, 17 grenade fuses, radios and walkie-talkies, computer-made coding and de-coding material and $27,400 in $100 bills. The Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington said the authorities in Managua had told them that they knew nothing about the car crash. The embassy repeated previous assertions that the Sandinista Government was not involved in providing arms and ammunition to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador. An embassy spokesman, Miriam Hooker, called on the United States to take its accusations to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
The head of the Ethiopian Government’s famine relief program, Dawit Wolde Giorgis, was reported yesterday to be seeking asylum in the United States. In Washington, the State Department denied that Mr. Dawit, the Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner in the Government of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, had asked for refuge. But a highly placed Washington source said Mr. Dawit was in the United States and had made it known that he intended to stay in this country. According to one report, he was staying with his sister-in-law, who is an official with the Ethiopian Mission to the United Nations, at her home in Orange, New Jersey. A teen-age girl at the home in Orange said yesterday that Mr. Dawit was not there but had stayed there Wednesday night.
South African troops ventured into Angola for the third time since a formal withdrawal in April, killing at least six black guerrillas and capturing weapons, South Africa’s television reported. The South African Broadcasting Corp. based its report on information from “diplomatic sources in Africa.” South African officials declined to comment on the report. The report said the troops entered Angola from Namibia during the weekend in pursuit of rebels belonging to the South West Africa People’s Organization. The South African troops were reported still in the country.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz today announced the appointment of a 12-member committee to advise him on policy toward South Africa. It is headed by Frank Cary, former I.B.M. chairman, and William T. Coleman, former Transportation Secretary. Others are former Attorney General Griffin Bell; Owen F. Beiber, head of the United Auto Workers; John R. Dellenback, president of the Christian College Coalition; Lawrence Eagleburger, former Under Secretary of State; the Rev. Timothy Healy, president of Georgetown University; Vernon E. Jordan Jr., former head of the National Urban League; Helene Kaplan, president of Barnard College; Roger B. Smith, chairman of General Motors; the Rev. Leon Sullivan of the Zion Baptist Church, Philadelphia; and Franklin Thomas, president of the Ford Foundation.
The House and the Senate deadlocked early today over a small provision in a three-year, $74 billion deficit-reducing package. This could mean the entire proposal will die as the 99th Congress moves to end its 1985 session. In an effort to rescue the deficit-reducing package, the Senate refused to adjourn for the Christmas holidays and instead recessed until 11 AM today. The Senate action prevented the House from adjourning and could force negotiators to reach a compromise. As a result of another disagreement, the House and Senate failed to approve an extension of the 16-cent-a-pack cigarette tax, which dropped to 8 cents at midnight. If this is not reversed, the government could lose more than $100 million a month in revenue. On a vote of 211 to 137 early this morning, the House, for the second time, rejected the Senate’s version of the deficit-reducing plan because it included a new tax on manufacturers to pay for part of the Government’s toxic waste cleanup program.
Congress paved the way to adjournment Thursday afternoon when the House, on a vote of 261 to 137, and the Senate, on a voice vote, approved the catchall appropriation bill for the rest of the fiscal year 1986, which ends September 30. The Administration helped the process along when the White House said President Reagan would sign the $368 billion catchall bill and Agriculture Secretary John R. Block said Mr. Reagan would sign the new, five-year farm bill, which was also approved this week.
George P. Shultz opposes polygraph tests for high Government officials. The Secretary of State said he would resign the minute “I am told that I’m not trusted.” His open dissent from a directive signed by President Reagan requiring polygraph, or lie-detector, tests by officials with access to highly sensitive information touched off an unusual public debate in the Administration. A senior White House official said that despite Mr. Shultz’s strong words it was highly unlikely that the Secretary of State would resign. “Shultz has strong feelings,” the official said. “This is one thing that sends him through the roof. It touches a nerve.”
A plan to sell the F.H.A. to private investors by 1990 has generated deep and widespread opposition by the real estate and construction industries. As a result, officials said, the Administration has tentatively decided to withdraw its proposal to sell the Federal Housing Administration. However, some Administration officials are still committed to the idea, and the President’s budget for the fiscal year 1987 will probably propose a study to determine whether it would be feasible to sell the agency, the officials said. The budget, to be submitted to Congress in early February, will not specify a timetable for selling the agency, nor will the budget accounts reflect the expected proceeds of such a sale, the officials said. The Office of Management and Budget has estimated the value of the agency at $3 billion.
President Reagan attends a joint meeting of the Economic and Domestic Policy Councils.
President Reagan hosts the White House Senior Staff Christmas Party.
The Justice Department filed suit against seven nearly all-white Chicago suburbs, charging that they imposed discriminatory residency requirements on job applicants to keep blacks out of municipal jobs. Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, head of the department’s civil rights division, said the employment discrimination suits were filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. The Justice Department charged that the suburbs purposely discriminated against blacks in employment and violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the non-discrimination provisions of the Revenue Sharing Act of 1972.
President Reagan was told that the government’s AIDS research program may produce so much new information for scientists that it may one day be viewed as “the health equivalent of the Manhattan Project,” which produced the first atomic bomb. A White House official said the optimistic assessment was offered by Dr. Donald Macdonald, acting assistant secretary of health in the Department of Health and Human Services, in a meeting at which the President received an update on deadly AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and a summary view of what government agencies are doing about it.
The Pentagon said it had successfully completed the first three operational tests of its intermediate-range Pershing 2 missile earlier this week at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 35-foot missiles were launched Monday and Tuesday from Cape Canaveral to an ocean target area several hundred miles down range. Although the Pershing was extensively tested during its research and development phase, the tests this week were the first in a series of “operational efficiency” firings involving soldiers and missiles deployed to Europe.
Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio), citing allegations of safety abuses in the U.S. airline industry, announced that the Senate’s subcommittee on investigations will conduct an examination into all facets of air safety. Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it would begin special inspections of the jet engine repair facilities operated by the major airlines and several independent overhaul companies.
Cigarette smoking is a greater threat to the health of most American workers than are workplace hazards, according to Dr. C. Everett Koop, the Surgeon General of the United States. Dr. Koop said cigarette smoking substantially increased the threat to life already faced by workers in hazardous industries, such as those that use asbestos.
A majority of Americans favor the quarantine of AIDS patients, and some would embrace measures as drastic as using tattoos to mark those with the deadly disorder, according to a poll published today. The Los Angeles Times Poll found that 51 percent of the respondents supported a quarantine of acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients, 48 percent would approve of identity cards for those who have taken tests indicating the presence of AIDS antibodies and 15 percent supported tattooing those with AIDS.
Edward M. Kennedy will not seek the Democratic nomination for President in 1988, he announced. The 53-year-old Senator said in a taped announcement broadcast over two Boston television stations that a Presidential candidacy for him would merely cloud his political agenda. “The prospect is that the fog surrounding my political plans will cloud the far more fundamental challenge, to put aside complacency and the appeals to narrow interest, to care about one another, even the least among us,” he said. As an example, he cited his trip to South Africa last year. He went, he said, “to raise the profound moral issue of apartheid.” But he added, “There was not only attention to that cause, there was also speculation about the meaning of my visit there for presidential politics here.”
A space shuttle mission was delayed until early next year. STS 61-C is scrubbed at T -13 seconds because of SRB auxiliary power problem. A hydraulic pump in a booster rocket attached to the space shuttle Columbia failed today, stopping the countdown just seconds before liftoff and delaying the mission until early next year. The shutdown came 14 seconds before the scheduled time of launching and 4 seconds before the shuttle’s three main engines were to have ignited to start the seven-man crew on a five-day mission. “This does change our Christmas plans somewhat,” the mission commander, Lieutenant Commander Robert L. Gibson of the Navy, said at a news conference. “We thought we were all done Christmas shopping, but I guess we now have a couple days left.” The Columbia, the first of the nation’s four space shuttles, had been grounded for two years for an extensive overhaul of its systems. The mission will now be delayed until the failed pump, which is on a rocket attached to the space shuttle, can be replaced. Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said they had tentatively rescheduled the launching for January 4, an extended delay so there would be no interference with the holidays.
A federal judge in Tucson rejected a defense motion to toss out the alien smuggling case against 11 sanctuary movement leaders because of alleged perjury by the government’s key witness. Lawyer William Walker sought the dismissal, claiming paid informant Jesus Cruz “willfully committed perjury.” Walker represents Catholic priest Anthony Clark, 37, of Nogales, Arizona, one of 11 Catholic and Protestant leaders from Arizona, Texas and Mexico accused of running an underground railroad for Central American refugees.
U.S. Attorney John Volz, whose three-month prosecution in New Orleans of Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards on racketeering and fraud charges ended in a mistrial, said he will probably retry the governor. Volz said he was reviewing the case and would make a decision before February 1. The judge granted a defense request for a mistrial Wednesday, after the jury of six women and six men said it was hopelessly deadlocked.
Mary Lund is 1st woman to receive a Jarvik VII artificial heart at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis.
An airborne prison escape was carried out near Pelzer, South Carolina. A woman who chartered a helicopter forced the pilot to land at gunpoint in the yard of a high-security state prison, three inmates scrambled aboard and the craft flew off. As they boarded the helicopter, a prison guard tried to pull them off and was shot in the lower jaw. State and Federal law-enforcement officers began scouring the South Carolina and nearby Georgia countryside. One of the convicts is a convicted murderer. Hal Leslie, a spokesman for the State Department of Corrections, said guards at the prison, the Perry Correctional Institute, fired pistols and a shotgun at the ascending helicopter but apparently did not hit it. The prison, one of the state’s four high-security prisons, is in rural Greenville County, about 10 miles south of Greenville. The $11.8 million prison, opened in 1981, has a population of about 1,150, twice its capacity of 576 inmates.
A Los Angeles defendant accused of child molestation who was jailed without bail for 21 months was granted $1 million bail Wednesday under an agreement that limits her contact with children. Judge Aviva Bobb of Municipal Court granted the 58-year-old defendant, Peggy Buckey, bail after her attorney, Dean Gits, told the judge that the District Attorney’s office no longer opposed the granting of bail. Mrs. Buckey and her son, Ray Buckey, had been the only defendants in the case held without bail. Ray Buckey remains in custody without bail. Five other defendants in the case are free on bail. The seven defendants are in the midst of a preliminary hearing before Judge Bobb to determine if they should stand trial on charges that they molested 14 of their students at the now-closed McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach. The hearing is now in its second year.
A 9-year-old boy died at Children’s Hospital without regaining consciousness today, two days after he was pulled from an icy pond where he was under water for 45 minutes. Jeremy Ghiloni died at 7:42 AM of heart failure, a hospital spokesman, Randy Ketcham, said. He said Monica and Thomas Kashner, the boy’s mother and stepfather, were at his bedside. “There were just too many strikes against him,” said Dr. James Kilman, the attending physician. “The cardiac failure resulted from the fact there had been so much damage to the heart,” Mr. Ketcham said. “Although it was beating, the muscle function was never very good.”
Donors anxious to replenish the Salvation Army’s bare cupboards bailed out the charity just in time for the organization to play its traditional Santa Claus role. “We’re absolutely delighted and humbled by the generosity of ordinary people,” Colonel Donald Seiler said in Boston, where contributors have given more than $16,000 worth of goods and money so far. “Now we’ll be able to help the needy as we always do during the holidays, including all those Christmas dinners with all the trimmings.”
“Wind in the Willows” opens at Nederlander Theater NYC for 4 performances.
The Expos trade pitcher Bill Gullickson and catcher Sal Butera to the Reds for pitchers Jay Tibbs, Andy McGaffigan, and John Stuper, and catcher Dann Bilardello.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1543.92 (+1.49)
Born:
Carter Hutton, Canadian NHL goaltender (Chicago Blackhawks, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues, Buffalo Sabres, Arizona Coyotes), in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Michael Taylor, MLB outfielder (Oakland A’s, Chicago White Sox), in Cheverly, Maryland.
Antonio Pittman, NFL running back (St. Louis Rams), in Akron, Ohio.
DeMarco Sampson, NFL wide receiver (Arizona Cardinals), in in Oakland, California.
Johan Asiata, New Zealander NFL guard (Chicago Bears), in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Lady Sovereign [Louise Amanda Harman], British rapper (“9 to 5”; “Love Me or Hate Me”), in London, England, United Kingdom.
History Diaries 