The eighth session of the 35-nation European Security Conference ended today with both the Soviet and United States representatives saying they were optimistic about reaching an agreement. The focus of discussions has narrowed from general talks to more central issues of preventing an accidental outbreak of war, a Western delegate said. Both said there was a businesslike atmosphere at the conference, which stems from the Geneva summit meeting last month between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev. But serious differences remain over such subjects as East bloc demands that advance notice be given on military air and naval activities as well as ground troop movements in Europe.
The Soviet Union pressed the United States today to join a moratorium on all nuclear testing, contending that its offer to permit on-site inspection of test ranges satisfied Reagan Administration concerns about monitoring a ban. A series of press commentaries today criticized the Administration’s refusal to join the moratorium. The press agency Tass accused Washington of seeking “one-sided disarmament by the Soviet Union.” The sudden flare-up on the issue was the first heated exchange between Washington and Moscow since the meeting last month between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader.
Three gunmen who turned a robbery trial into a 34-hour hostage drama here surrendered to the police tonight. The surrender on a darkened airport runway, where the gunmen had expected to leave for safety, brought to a peaceful end the incident that started Thursday morning with the seizure of a courtroom in this city near the Atlantic coast. In all, 32 hostages were freed Thursday night and today, the last two at the airport just when it seemed that the police had been forced to allow the gunmen to escape. The three gunmen had been taken by car to the airport with four manacled hostages. The gunmen were holding hand grenades and had threatened to blow themselves up if the police hindered their escape.
France’s highest appeals court today overturned a lower-court ruling that prevented Klaus Barbie from being charged with some crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of France. The decision in effect postponed the trial of Mr. Barbie, a former Nazi SS captain, until after the French parliamentary elections in March. In its decision, the Court of Cassation reversed lower-court rulings that had prevented Mr. Barbie from being prosecuted for crimes against French Resistance fighters, which the lower courts asserted did not constitute “crimes against humanity.” The prosecutors had limited the charges under this category to the deportation of 86 people arrested at the office of the Jews of France Committee in Lyons and the deportation to Auschwitz of 44 children and 7 adults from the village of Izieu.
Fire badly damaged Fauchon, the renowned luxury food store in Paris, killing the owner-manager and her daughter and injuring at least 11 other people. The store has been a target of radicals. A spokesmen said it would reopen as usual Saturday for the rest of the Christmas and New Year shopping season. The fire occurred eight years after Fauchon was gutted by fire, on December 19, 1977, when a bomb exploded outside the store’s well-stocked windows at 28 Place de la Madeleine. The windows traditionally contain the finest and most expensive display of wines, foods and exotic fruits in France.
Guerrillas fired mortar shells at a Northern Ireland village police station near the border with the Irish Republic late Thursday night, slightly wounding six people and damaging the station and scores of houses, the police said today. About 500 residents in the village, Castlederg in County Tyrone, were evacuated. Bomb experts searched for unexploded mortar shells, the police said. No group took responsibility for the attack. The outlawed Irish Republican Army has stepped up attacks on Northern Ireland police stations recently.
The British Government today published details of proposed legislation to strip drug traffickers of their fortunes in Britain and overseas. The measure would set up a mechanism to trace, freeze and confiscate the proceeds of drug sales. David Mellor, a Home Office minister, said at a news conference that the proposal would also specify two new offenses: helping to launder drug money and tipping off a trafficker under police investigation. Convicted dealers would have to prove their assets were not drug-related.
A Bulgarian accused of conspiring to assassinate Pope John Paul II denied today that he was ever part of such a plot. The Bulgarian, Maj. Zhelyo K. Vasilev, the former deputy military attaché at the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome, is charged with helping plan the shooting of the Pope in 1981 and the attempted escape of Mehmet Ali Ağca, who is serving a life sentence for the attack. Major Vasilev told an Italian court here today that he had never met Mr. Ağca. He also denied all the charges about his purported role in the shooting, including the charge that he helped to plan the shooting with the two other Bulgarian defendants. Italian judges traveled to Bulgaria this week to question two of the Bulgarian defendants because the Bulgarian Government, asserting that they have diplomatic immunity, has refused to extradite them to Italy.
Six Albanian brothers and sisters have taken refuge in the Italian Embassy in Tirana, the Albanian capital, and an Italian newspaper said today that they had threatened to take poison if they are turned over to the Communist authorities. An Italian Foreign Ministry statement said Albania had asked Italy to hand over the six immediately, saying they were “dangerous for state security” and had been under surveillance. The Milan newspaper Il Giornale reported the suicide threat by the four women and two men, who are between 40 and 60 years old. It said they wanted to go to Italy and then to Canada.
The son of Yuri V. Andropov, the former Soviet leader, has been appointed an ambassador at large and will work with Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, a ministry official said. The appointment of Igor Y. Andropov, a 44-year-old career diplomat and former Ambassador to Greece, was made several weeks ago, the Foreign Ministry official said Thursday.
Israel dismantled the unit that directed the activities of Jonathan Jay Pollard, a United States Navy analyst accused of stealing hundreds of pages of classified documents, the State Department said. The department said it was satisfied that a team of American officials sent to Israel to investigate the case had received “full cooperation.” It also said Israel had returned all of the documents obtained “in an unauthorized manner.” The American team left Israel today after a week of discussions conducted under unusual secrecy.
The Soviet Union has provided SA-5 long-range ground-to-air missiles to Libya that would pose a threat to aircraft in disputed areas of the Mediterranean, the State Department said today. A longstanding dispute between the United States and Libya over Libyan territorial claims in the Mediterranean has led to serious clashes in recent years. Washington maintains that Libya can claim only a three-mile territorial limit; Libya claims 12 miles except in the area of the Gulf of Sidra, where it says its territorial limits run 12 miles north of a line drawn across the mouth of the Gulf.
Iraq reportedly asked the United Nations today to help stop an expected Iranian offensive, while Iran’s President criticized Moscow and said there could be no peace with Iraq’s current leaders. In a message to the United Nations Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz of Iraq said Iran was planning “a massive offensive,” the official Iraqi press agency reported. Iran’s President, Hojatolislam Ali Khamenei, told tens of thousands of worshipers: “Peace between us and Iraq is not possible as long as the current regime is in power.” He warned the Soviet Union, Iraq’s main weapons supplier, against stepping up the aid and condemned Moscow for receiving the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, this week.
The man elected the next Chief Minister of the state of Assam in northeastern India said today that his party planned to expel thousands of immigrants who came here illegally from neighboring Bangladesh. “We want them to be deported immediately after their detection,” the politician, Prafulla Mahanta, leader of the Assam People’s Front, said in in an interview. The party defeated the Congress Party, led by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in elections on Monday.
With a .357 Magnum revolver in his shoulder-holster and a shotgun on his desk, Edgard Rivera sat in front of two television monitors watching clients enter his Lima, Peru weapons store. “The security situation has got out of hand,” he said. “Our sales are three times higher than last year. People are having to arm themselves because the police can’t protect them.” Even for a city that in the last year has experienced car bombings, blackouts and daytime killings by leftist guerrillas, a recent wave of kidnappings has come as a shock here, suddenly forcing Lima’s middle and upper classes to change their way of life. “The rich are hiring bodyguards by the hundreds,” Mr. Rivera said. “Husbands are teaching their wives how to use guns. Families are buying savage dogs. They’ve stopped going out alone. They’re keeping their children at home. And they’re right in doing so.” The government asserts that 48 kidnappings have been reported to the police this year, compared with only nine in 1984. But officials concede that the real figure is far higher because the families of most victims follow orders and negotiate quietly.
The head of the Ethiopian Government’s famine relief program, Dawit Wolde Georgis, yesterday denied reports that he was seeking asylum in the United States. In a telephone interview, Mr. Dawit said he was “on vacation” in the United States, but declined to say whether he planned to return to Ethiopia. On Thursday, the State Department denied that Mr. Dawit had asked for refuge, but a highly placed source in Washington said the Ethiopian official had made it known that he intended to stay in the United States.
Nigeria foiled an overthrow of its four-month-old military Government, and many military officers were arrested, the Defense Minister said. Three generals and a number of senior air force officers were seized for plotting against the Government of Major General Ibrahim Babangida. The coup attempt was still being plotted when the arrests were made, the sources said.
Raids on two homes in the capital of Lesotho, Maseru, killed 9 people identified as South African refugees. Nine people identified as South African refugees were shot and killed early today when raiders, said to have come from South Africa, attacked two homes in Maseru, the capital of neighboring Lesotho. In Cape Town, South Africa’s highest security body, the State Security Council, warned the country’s neighbors that “all the peoples of southern Africa will pay a heavy price” if they permit insurgents to use their territory for attacks on South Africa. The council, which groups senior, political, police and military figures, is headed by President P. W. Botha.
Congress completed the 1985 session after failing to approve a three-year, $74 billion deficit-reducing package. Fewer than two-thirds of Senate members and apparently far less than half the House were present for the end of the 99th Congress’s first session, the longest of the Reagan Administration’s tenure. The last action was an extension of the cigarette tax of 16 cents a pack through March 14. The Senate adjourned at 6:28 PM, followed by the House at 6:40. The deficit package, the culmination of a year’s effort that was led by Senate Republicans, was finally killed for this year at the hand of the same Republicans. The crucial vote was 35 to 29. It was a generally partisan vote that the Republicans won partly because more Republicans had remained in town. The legislation was also stalled by President Reagan’s threat of a veto, which he reiterated today, and by a deadlock between the two chambers over a relatively small provision for a new tax on manufacturers to pay for the Government’s toxic waste cleanup program.
President Reagan participates in a swearing-in ceremony for Dr. Otis Bowen as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
President Reagan speaks with Secretary of State George Shultz regarding a new policy involving Polygraph tests to uncover espionage.
Strong objections to Medicare cuts and reductions in other domestic social programs proposed by the Office of Management and Budget have been made by the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. Dr. Otis R. Bowen, who was sworn in December 13, moved toward a major confrontation with the budget office in a letter to its director, James C. Miller 3d.
Attempts to avert a Cabinet crisis over polygraph tests were made by the White House. Seeking to ease the concern of Secretary George P. Shultz over giving lie detector tests to high officials, President Reagan and White House officials went out of their way to say that Mr. Shultz would not have to take a test. After a meeting between President Reagan and Mr. Shultz this afternoon, the President indicated that the Secretary’s fears of widespread use of the tests had been resolved. A senior State Department official said tonight that Mr. Shultz now believed that he and the President basically agreed that polygraph tests should be limited to cases of suspected espionage. Last week the White House indicated that thousands of Government employees with access to sensitive information would be subject to the tests.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy decided to remove himself from the 1988 Democratic Presidential race because he believed he could not win the election and because he wanted to clear the field for the next generation of Kennedys, according to political associates. These associates, who are familiar with the circumstances surrounding the decision, said Mr. Kennedy concluded this fall that he might be able to win the Democratic nomination, but that his political liabilities would probably mean defeat in the election. Linked to this gloomy political assessment was the feeling of the 53-year-old Massachusetts Senator that speculation about his national campaign plans could complicate the efforts of younger members of the Kennedy family to start political careers for themselves. Whatever the reasons for Mr. Kennedy’s unexpected announcement — it was the fourth time in 13 years that he had removed himself from Presidential politics — his decision is likely to have major implications for the 1988 Presidential field. The initial reaction among Democrats was that Senator Gary Hart of Colorado has now become the leading candidate for the nomination, which some see as a mixed blessing, in a contest with a younger generation of centrist candidates.
The economy moved at a tepid pace from October through December, showing a gain of 3.2 percent, and 2.4 percent for the whole year, its smallest increase since 1982, the Government reported. The annual figure, which might change, shows that the economy has kept pace with economists’ forecasts, but is significantly below the 3.9 percent that the Reagan Administration predicted. The Commerce Department’s report also estimated that inflation, based on the gross national product, is increasing at a 3.7 percent rate in the current quarter, well above the 2.7 percent rate of the third quarter. This was consistent with the sharp rise of six-tenths of 1 percent in the Consumer Price Index in November that was reported today by the Labor Department. Economists and Administration officials said the fourth-quarter “flash” estimate for the gross national product suggested little change in the course of the economy’s growth as it enters 1986.
Standing at attention on a snowy parade ground, 17,000 troops paid homage today to the 248 American soldiers killed in the crash of a chartered airliner in Gander, Newfoundland, a week ago. The emotional 40-minute ceremony by the 101st Airborne Division ended with “Taps” and four Air Force jets flying in the “missing man” formation. in which one jet pulls up and away from the others in a low pass over the field. An estimated 4,000 civilians were on hand in weather so cold that Army ushers brought out wool blankets for the victims’ families. After an invocation and a reading from the book of Isaiah, the commanding general of the 101st, Burton D. Patrick, told the soldiers that the deaths of the 248 were “a loss of indescribable proportions.”
The DC-8 jetliner that crashed in Newfoundland last week was involved in an incident four years ago in which problems with the cabin-pressure system forced the pilot to make a rapid descent for an unscheduled landing in Denver. The plane, which was operated by Arrow Air when it crashed, was being leased by Capital Air International at the time the Denver incident occurred on a flight from New York to San Francisco. It was unable to complete the flight.
Federal agents arrested a print shop worker here Friday night on charges of trying to sell classified materials to the Soviet Union, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced early today. Randy Miles Jefferies, 26 years old, was arrested at a downtown Washington motel shortly after 9 P.M. and was accused of “gathering and attempting to deliver defense information to representatives of the Soviet military office” in Washington on December 14, according to a statement by the F.B.I director, William H. Webster.
The president of the United Mine Workers of America announced today the end of the union’s 15-month strike against the A. T. Massey Coal Company, one of the longest and most bitter labor disputes in the union’s history. The decision to end the strike came shortly after the company agreed to settle charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board. Massey, resolving a key issue in the labor dispute, agreed that its subsidiaries in West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania constituted a single company and not independent operations, as the parent company had maintained.
The state’s requirement that birth certificates include the race of a child’s parents was held constitutional today by the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Fourth Circuit. The ruling came in an unsettled portion of a case in which a woman has been trying to change the designation on her birth certificate from “colored” to “white.” The woman, Susie Guillory Phipps, the great-great-great-great granddaughter of a French planter and a slave, lost an earlier bid to change her racial designation, but went back to the panel for a ruling on the state law requiring parents’ race on birth certificates. “The statute does not result in racial classifications being made by the state,” the appellate court panel said in a brief ruling. “The state registrar of vital records is merely the custodian of information reported by the individuals whose race is recorded.”
A Federal grand jury today indicted 21 followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh on conspiracy charges, accusing them of illegally tapping telephone lines and planting microphones in rooms at the guru’s Oregon commune. The eavesdropping scheme, uncovered after the departure September 15 of the Indian guru’s former personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, was “without precedent in the District of Oregon,” United States Attorney Charles H. Turner, said in announcing the five-count conspiracy indictment.
A 3-year-old girl whose mother lay injured after a vehicle accident climbed a steep embankment and attracted the attention of a motorist to save the woman’s life, officials in Vilas, North Caroliina said. “My mind couldn’t have comprehended a little girl standing beside the road in 18-degree weather,” said Carl Moody, who said he nearly passed the girl, Carly Wyatt, on Wednesday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation today charged Joyce L. Bailey, a former textile worker, with air piracy and extended a search nationwide for her and three convicts she lifted from a South Carolina prison yard with a helicopter. Bureau agents said Miss Bailey, 40 years old, also known as Joyce Bailey Mattox, had hijacked the helicopter.
Senator Paul Laxalt’s affairs in Nevada are coming under scrutiny in the pretrial process in a $250 million libel suit he has brought against McClatchy Newspapers. The suit was prompted by an article about Ormsby House Casino, a casino-hotel Mr. Laxalt built in his home town of Carson City after his 1967-71 term as Governor of Nevada.
Sportscaster Howard Cosell retires from television sports after 20 years with ABC.
Denis Potvin passes Bobby Orr as NHL defenseman scorer (916 points).
NFL Friday Night Football:
The Denver Broncos kept their playoff hopes alive tonight with a 27–24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks after trailing by 17-0 in the second quarter. A 43-yard field goal by Rich Karlis with 55 seconds to play gave Denver the victory. Karlis had missed a 34-yarder earlier in the fourth quarter. Denver, which finished the regular season at 11–5, would need a loss by either the Jets or New England Patriots, both 10–5, in order to make the playoffs as a wild-card team. Seattle just missed tying the game again as time expired when Norm Johnson’s 52-yard field-goal attempt hit the right upright. “We had our backs to the wall early and came back from 17–0,” said Coach Dan Reeves of the Broncos. “We deserved to win.” The Broncos were behind, 24–17, with 5:20 to go after Seattle’s Curt Warner leaped into the end zone from 1-yard out. But John Elway, who completed 24 of 42 passes for 432 yards, drove his team 80 yards in eight plays for the game-tying touchdown with 2:35 left, the key play a 60-yard strike to Steve Watson to the Seattle 6. Steve Sewell’s 1-yard run and Karlis’ extra-point kick tied the score at 24–24. The Seahawks then gave up the ball after three Dave Krieg passes were incomplete, and Denver took over on its 38 with 1:55 remaining and drove downfield to position Karlis for his game-winning field goal. Seattle (8–8) had taken a 7–0 lead after Krieg passed 41 yards to Daryl Turner for a touchdown. Johnson booted a 29-yard field goal and Terry Taylor ran a blocked Chris Norman punt into the end zone from 15 yards out to make it 17–0. But the Broncos made it 17–10 at halftime on a 17-yard touchdown pass from Elway to Watson and a 25-yard field goal by Karlis. Gerald Willhite scored on a 1-yard run with 1:40 gone in the fourth quarter to tie the score at 17–17. Krieg hit 17 of 40 passes for 216 yards and was intercepted once for the game’s only turnover.
Denver Broncos 27, Seattle Seahawks 24
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1543.00 (-0.92)
Born:
Tyler Sturdevant, MLB pitcher (Tampa Bay Rays), in Littleton, Colorado.
History Diaries 