One surviving terrorist of the gunmen who killed 15 people in an attack at a Rome airport Friday said he was a Palestinian born in Lebanon and a member of a renegade Palestinian group, Italian justice officials said. The group is headed by Sabry al-Banna, also known as Abu Nidal, who broke with Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Al Fatah Palestine Liberation Organization group in 1974. Mr. Banna’s group was accused of hijacking an Egyptian airliner to Malta last month. However, in a brief television interview broadcast on CBS News a man identified as one of the terrorists captured in Vienna was quoted as saying he belonged to the P.L.O. and acted under orders from “Fatah.” The Italian officials said a note found in the terrorist’s pocket in Rome declared that the attack at Leonardo da Vinci Airport and a similar attack at Schwechat Airport in Vienna were in reprisal for the destruction of the P.L.O. headquarters near Tunis by Israeli aircraft October 1. The note was signed “Martyrs of Palestine.”
President Reagan told Israel that the terrorists who attacked the airports in Rome and Vienna must “be brought to justice,” but said “we must not allow terrorists to deter us from pursuing our larger goal of a lasting peace.” A White House official said the message was intended to reflect a plea for restraint in the aftermath of the attacks at El Al Israel Airlines check-in counters in the two airports. At the same time, U.S. Government officials differed over whether messages had been sent to other governments urging them to put pressure on Israel to pursue a moderate course. “The United States has asked a number of governments in the region to lean on Israel not to retaliate,” a White House official said. “There is serious concern that the cycle of violence not be continued.”
The possibility of an Israeli reprisal for the attacks on the El Al Israel Airlines ticket counters at the airports was suggested by Israeli officials. They were considering how to react, and senior officials said that if the past was any indication Israel would find a way to retaliate at a time and place of its own choosing. “Take our statement of yesterday seriously,” a senior Israeli official said today. “It doesn’t mean tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but in the past these kinds of terror acts never went without an answer.” The government statement to which the official referred said that “Israel will continue its struggle against terrorism in every place and at any time it sees fit.”
Identification of the terrorists and their affiliation have not been established beyond doubt. The motive for the attacks is also obscure. A note found on the only surviving terrorist in the Rome attack said it was a reprisal for the Israeli air raid on the P.L.O.’s headquarters in Tunis last August. Thus it appeared that the attacks were a kind of mad, suicidal howl of anger and frustration directed at Israel. But there was speculation among Middle East experts that they could also have roots in inter-Arab struggles. According to this line of reasoning, another goal of the attacks could be to help block the peace effort mounted by King Hussein of Jordan and Yasser Arafat, the P.L.O. leader.
Einar R. Maland, a retired Brooklyn bank executive, his wife and his sister were watching a television newscast on Friday in the den of their white bungalow outside Tampa, Florida. At first there was no fresh news about the Malands’ two sons — Don and Mark — who had been reported wounded in the terrorist attack at the Rome airport. But then, Mr. Maland recalled yesterday, as a television newsman was closing, he said: “We have additional information on the bombing. There has been another American dead. Don Maland.” “That was the most horrible moment in my life,” the father said, speaking from the home. He said his wife, Grace McDonough Maland, and his sister, Dagny Maland Jensen, had screamed.
Two gunmen who were involved in the attack on passengers waiting to board an El Al airliner at the Vienna airport on Friday will be tried on murder charges, Austrian officials said today. The announcement was made in a radio interview by Foreign Minister Leopold Gratz. Robert Danzinger, head of the Austrian security police, told reporters that charges of murder were already being drawn up against the two surviving gunmen by the State Prosecutor’s Office. Three people, including one of the gunmen, were killed in the attack and 47 people were wounded.
President Reagan tapes a New Years greeting to the Soviet people.
Yelena Bonner spoke with her husband, Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, in her second telephone call to the city of Gorky in the Soviet Union where he is living in internal exile. Tatyana Yankelevich, Bonner’s daughter by a previous marriage, said the phone connection was poor and that although Bonner “avoided any subject that would displease the KGB,” the call was interrupted by jamming. This also occurred when Bonner telephoned Sakharov two weeks ago, the first such call since Bonner arrived in the United States early this month for medical treatment.
Police said they arrested 18 Irish nationalists in house-to-house raids in more than five cities in Northern Ireland and confiscated documents and tape recordings as part of an investigation into serious crimes. The predominantly Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary did not identify those arrested, but news reports said they included Martin McGuinness, a member of the advisory Northern Ireland Assembly, and local councilmen belonging to Sinn Fein, the legal political arm of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.
An Egyptian border policeman who ran amok in Sinai, shooting and killing seven Israeli tourists, four of them children, was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor today. Later, an administrative court rejected an appeal by lawyers for the policeman, Suliman Khater, that the trial should have taken place in a civilian court and upheld the sentence.
A pact signed by leaders of Lebanon’s rival militia forces is designed to bring an end to a decade of fighting. It was signed in Damascus, Syria, under the supervision of Syria’s First Vice President, Abdel Halim Khaddam, who mediated the negotiations, by Nabih Berri, president of the mainstream Shiite movement Amal; his ally, Walid Jumblat, head of the mostly Druse Progressive Socialist Party, and Elie Hobeika, commander of the powerful Christian militia known as the Lebanese Forces. “It is all over,” Mr. Berri said.
A Muslim fundamentalist group that has said it killed a Jewish hostage has threatened to kill three Lebanese Jews it is holding and to strike at others “on whom we may lay our hands.” The group, calling itself the Organization of the Oppressed in the World, said it would take the action if Lebanese prisoners detained in southern Lebanon by the Israelis and their Christian allies were not freed, and if what it called the bombardment of southern villages did not stop.
The Iranian navy seized the Danish freighter Hornland in the Gulf of Oman, bound for the Persian Gulf, after spotting crates of explosives among the cargo, the official Iranian news agency reported. The ship’s captain said the cargo was intended for Iraq, Iran’s enemy in the five-year-old Persian Gulf War, the agency said.
U.S. President Reagan said today that the Soviet Union had inflicted “utter hell” on the people of Afghanistan through its 1979 intervention. In his weekly radio address, however, Mr. Reagan tempered his continuing denouncement of the Soviet action with a pledge that the United States was willing to serve as a “guarantor” of a settlement that would result in the pullout of Soviet troops. The speech was the second time in two days that the President had used sharp language to condemn the Soviet intervention, which he said today had failed to achieve its objective. “These courageous people have shown the world that the Soviets can never achieve the outright subjugation of the Afghan mind and spirit they seek,” he said.
Pakistan’s President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who has promised to abolish martial law by the end of this year, is keeping people guessing until the last minute about how much democracy he will allow under civilian rule. General Zia told a reporter today that his announcement on martial law would come “in a few days.” Others suggested it would occur Monday. “All I can tell you is that it will come and that lifting martial law is a certainty,” a senior Pakistani Government official said. General Zia and his aides seem to be making last-minute decisions about what the new Government set-up will be. General Zia now runs Pakistan as President, Chief Martial Law Administrator and the army’s Chief of Staff, the last of the three titles being the one he held when he seized power in a coup in July 1977 and suspended the Constitution. He first promised to restore a civilian government 90 days after taking office. Later deadlines were similarly proclaimed and dropped. But this time, General Zia has moved the process so far along that few think he can back down. Critics maintain that the army will still run the government.
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, speaking at the 100th anniversary of the Congress Party, attacked political corruption and said his own party is “losing touch” with the masses. During a 70-minute speech at a Bombay cricket stadium, Gandhi told a crowd of 100,000 party leaders and workers: “We talk of high principles and lofty ideas needed to build a strong and prosperous India. But we obey no discipline, no rule, follow no principle of public morality, display no sense of social awareness….”
Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone reorganized his Government tonight, replacing most of his Cabinet but retaining his Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense and Finance. Mr. Nakasone also kept in place the top executives of his governing Liberal Democratic Party. The realignment was far more significant for domestic politics than for its effect on Japan’s positions on trade and other international matters. As they have for the last two years, the Liberal Democrats will continue to govern in a coalition with the New Liberal Club, a small splinter party of like-minded conservatives.
Presidential elections scheduled for February are largely irrelevant to the problems of the Philippines and are likely to ripen the conditions for a popular uprising, an underground Communist organizer has said. The organizer, who asked in an interview to be identified only as Nilo, said he believed that a victory by President Ferdinand E. Marcos over Corazon C. Aquino was “a foregone conclusion” and that this would lead to further polarization and radicalization of the nation. His statements are consistent with the worries of some diplomats and Filipino politicians, and the statements are supported by several leftist activists, some of whom said in interviews that they were giving skeptical support to Mrs. Aquino as a “last chance” for the democratic process. Nilo, 33 years old, is a regional leader of the National Democratic Front, a leftist umbrella organization that is controlled by the Communist Party. He is also a former sociology teacher who has served as a political officer among the guerrillas and as an organizer in urban areas. He was interviewed recently during a clandestine visit he made to Manila.
Philippine Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile accepted the findings of a commission and recommended today that a town mayor, a police chief and 44 soldiers and militiamen be prosecuted for the killings of 20 anti-Government demonstrators in a rally in September.
Western Samoan Prime Minister Tofilau Eti Alesana resigned Friday after his Government’s budget proposal for 1986 was rejected by Parliament. The New Zealand Press Association said Vaai Kolone, the opposition leader, would be sworn in as the Pacific island nation’s Prime Minister early next week. The news associaton said Mr. Tofilau resigned after Malietoa Tanumafili, the head of state, refused his request to dissolve Parliament and call new elections. Mr. Tofilau had led the Government since July.
Honduran soldiers, armed with automatic rifles and tear gas, prevented about 200 peace marchers from entering the country, witnesses said. Participants in the March for Peace in Central America arrived at La Fraternidad, on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, and more than 100 Honduran soldiers refused to let them cross into Honduras. “Those people will not enter Honduras… and that is definite,” Interior Minister Arnulfo Pineda Lopez said. Last week, march organizers said they had received a telex from Honduran officials granting them permission to cross Honduras.
The Organization of African Unity announced that Mali and Burkina Faso agreed to a truce after three days of border clashes, but Mali said its warplanes bombed “four precise military targets” in the disputed territory. OAU President Abdou Diouf, who is also president of Senegal, said in a statement read over Radio Dakar that the cease-fire took effect at a minute after midnight Saturday. But Radio Mali reported from Bamako that Malian troops pushed Burkina Faso troops from the border town of Sikasso, which Burkina Faso attacked last week. Burkina Faso had no comment on the Malian report.
Eight Tanzanian army officers and one civilian were sentenced today to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow President Julius K. Nyerere in December 1982. Two army officers and four civilians were acquitted of the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of death. A High Court Judge, Nassoro Mnzavas, said he had decided not to impose the death sentence because the conspirators were young first offenders and had been in custody for three years. Prosecution witnesses testified that a British naval vessel and six Tanzanian jet fighters were to have been involved in the plot to topple Mr. Nyerere, who was to have been killed as he was leaving church. Mr. Nyerere stepped down as President last month after leading the country since independence in 1961.
Five more bodies were discovered in hills south of Durban, South Africa, bringing to 68 the death toll in fighting between thousands of Zulu and Pondo tribesmen. Police officials braced for more tribal violence and warned that the death toll could climb to more than 100 after officers complete a search of the brush-covered Umbumbulu Hills.
Two months after the South African Government imposed sweeping restrictions on the press, the vivid television images of protest and violent suppression that many believe helped galvanize American sentiment on South Africa have become increasingly scarce. Broadcast journalists say the restrictions have changed television coverage of events in South Africa, where more than 1,000 people, most of them black, have died in the unrest since September 1984. The bans, they say, have forced them to rethink developments in that country and their approach in reporting them. Under the rules announced November 2, all reporters, print and broadcast, must be under police supervision when they cover scenes of unrest in areas covered by the government’s state of emergency decree. But pictures or sound recordings of unrest in those areas are banned. Television and radio therefore suffer more than newspapers and magazines, though the same restrictions apply to still photographers as to video and sound technicians.
White House budget officials, under pressure from a new antideficit law, have urged President Reagan to cut back a scheduled military pay increase, payments to weapons companies for basic research and other Pentagon spending plans in the budget he will send Congress in February, Pentagon and other Administration officials say. Pentagon officials, however, say Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger insists on a budget of $314.7 billion, about 10 percent higher than Congress appropriated for the current year. Mr. Weinberger has argued that such an increase is needed to catch up to the level Mr. Reagan and Congress agreed on in May, long before passage of the law to eliminate the deficit by 1991. One senior Pentagon official said this week that the military realized such a budget increase would stand no chance of Congressional approval but that Mr. Weinberger viewed the figure as a sign of the President’s continued commitment to rearmament. Mr. Reagan, in signing the antideficit measure December 12, said he intended to avoid “cuts in defense that endanger our national security.” But officials said at the time that he had not necessarily ruled out some trims in the military budget request for the fiscal year 1987, which begins next October 1.
The National Security Agency has initiated a five-year program to encode most of the millions of electronic messages sent each year by the Federal Government and defense contractors. At present a relatively small number of such messages are routinely encoded, primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency and other Government bureaus involved with national security. The N.S.A.’s program would extend to civilian agencies like the Agriculture Department and the Internal Revenue Service. The agency will also try to persuade major private businesses like grain dealers, banks and stockbrokers to purchase coding equipment to make it difficult for outsiders to understand their communications. The principal impetus behind the program is the belief of Government security officials that the Soviet Union has an active electronic surveillance program directed against the United States.
The U.S. performs a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site. The federal government, despite objections from 30 members of Congress, carried out a major nuclear weapon test related to President Reagan’s antimissile defense program. The lawmakers had urged Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger to postpone the underground test, saying flaws in design had to be corrected. Energy Department officials announced yesterday in Nevada that the test had been completed after several postponements because of bad weather. The test had originally been scheduled for December 19, but high winds had threatened to blow any escaped radiation toward populated areas. Las Vegas lies 104 miles southeast of the Nevada test site, where the government explodes nuclear weapons deep beneath the desert.
Governor Richard W. Riley declared an emergency in South Carolina’s overcrowded prisons and ordered a sentence rollback of 90 days for all prisoners convicted of nonviolent offenses. The order is likely to mean freedom for about 150 inmates. Under a 1983 law, prison sentences can be rolled back up to 90 days when the state’s prison population exceeds the safe and reasonable operating capacity for more than 30 days. As of Friday, there were 9,224 inmates in the state’s 26 prisons — 1,248 more than the capacity. This is the fourth release of prisoners since the 1983 law was passed. About 500 inmates were released in the other three rollbacks.
The Federal Aviation Administration proposed to ban within two years an older part, still used in more than 1,800 Pratt & Whitney engines on U.S. airplanes, that has shot from engines in flight at least 16 times. One such failure of the part-called a spacer-contributed to or caused the September 6 crash of a Midwest Express jetliner as it was taking off from Milwaukee. All 31 people aboard were killed.
Voters in three of Honolulu’s nine City Council districts cast ballots in a special election to fill seats left vacant by the recall of three veteran councilmen who had switched to the Republican Party. Officials forecast a poor turnout because of football games, including the Aloha Bowl in the city, and voter apathy resulting from a long legal fight over the election. On October 5, 62.6% of the 78,641 registered voters in the three districts voted to recall Councilmen George Akahane, Toraki Matsumoto, and Rudy Pacarro, who in June surprised their predominantly Democratic constituents by switching parties.
The United States has supplied more than $120 billion in military aid to 113 countries since 1950, about half of it in the form of grants, the General Accounting Office reported. The agency, which does research for Congress, said that as of Sept. 30, 43 countries owed this country a total of $60.7 billion for military aid, and that the U.S. government had guaranteed $58.7 billion of those debts. Since then, it noted, the government has switched from backing commercial loans to making more grants and direct, low-interest loans. The report said that since the mid-1970s, the United States has made almost $1.7 billion in payments to cover defaults on the guaranteed loans.
Money from around the world is pouring into the United States, pushing total foreign investment toward a record $1 trillion. The funds, whether invested with fanfare in a Japanese-owned auto plant or quietly in billions of dollars of Government bonds, have helped rebuild cities, create jobs, preserve agricultural land, lower home mortgage rates and improve American technology. A Saudi investor is developing a large office complex in Salt Lake City; the giant West German chemical company, BASF, recently bought the American ink and paint maker, Inmont, for $1 billion; French taxpayers are sustaining the American Motors Corporation through a major investment by the state-owned Regie Nationale des Usines Renault. But as the investment mounts, so do qualms about its effect. This wave of investment is far more diversified than others in the country’s history, with Asian investors, led by fiercely competitive Japan, playing a crucial role.
Navy officials said that Commander Donal M. Billig will face a general court-martial in the deaths of five patients on whom he performed heart surgery. They said that Billig, 54, will be tried next month on five counts of involuntary manslaughter and 24 counts of dereliction of duty in the deaths, at Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington. Billig was chief of head and chest surgery, and the trial is expected to examine practices at the hospital as well as Billig’s competence.
A man who was cleared in the fatal stabbing of a man trying to steal candy from a vendor in a New York subway station in February has been arrested again in another stabbing incident. Andrew Frederick, 25, was taken into custody after Sebastian Williams, 17, suffered two minor cuts in an apparent argument over a subway train seat, according to William Murphy, a spokesman for the Transit Authority police. Frederick faces charges of assault and criminal possession of a weapon, Murphy said.
Mary Lund opened her eyes and seemed more alert on her 10th day with an artificial heart, doctors at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis reported. A hospital spokesman said that the 40-year-old woman’s condition had improved slightly but remained critical. Lund has been in a light coma since three days after a Jarvik-7 pump was placed in her chest.
Florida voters will decide next November if casino gambling will be permitted in the state. State election officials said Friday that a coalition of hotel owners and real estate developers had collected enough signatures to place a statewide referendum on the ballot. The vote will be the second time in eight years that the casino question has been on a state ballot. A proposal to allow casinos along a 16-mile strip from Miami Beach to Hollywood was rejected in 1978 by a 3-to-1 margin. Proponents say casino gambling could generate new revenue for the state, particularly in sagging resort areas. Opponents say casinos would feed the already substantial presence of criminal activity in South Florida.
Union meatpackers at Geo. A. Hormel & Company rejected a proposed contract that would end their four-month walkout, union officials said Friday after two days of unofficial balloting. The workers, who cast secret ballots, rejected the proposal by a 2-to-1 margin, according to Jim Guyette, president of Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. He said more than 90 percent of the locals 1,425 members voted, but did not give an exact vote tally. The vote has not been sanctioned by the union’s international unit, which is conducting a mail-in vote to the Mediation and Conciliation Service in Minneapolis. Ballots for that vote are to be returned by next Friday.
Older Houstonians still talk about the dazzling night of March 17, 1949, when Glenn McCarthy, the wealthy wildcatter, threw a blowout party to open his new Shamrock Hotel. He brought in a trainload of celebrities from Hollywood to christen the hotel, 18 stories of superlatives: the world’s largest bath towels, a swimming pool big enough to ski in, a 1,000-car garage with four brands of gasoline and a refrigerated garbage room “to retard the development of odors.” It was a hotel that Texans, flush with new oil money and not averse to displaying it, could be proud of. Over the years the hulking tan brick hotel with its roof of emerald-green tiles came to symbolize the brash and daring style that made Houston great, rich and, to some, a bit crude. Countless oil deals were struck there, and many a fortune made or lost over a handshake, or sometimes a punch, in its bottle club. The other day the current owner, the Hilton Hotels Corporation, announced that it would close the landmark hotel because it was unable to compete in Houston’s lagging economy. The announcement marked more than the end of a hotel. For the Shamrock Hilton, as it is now called, was sold — almost given away, in truth — to the Texas Medical Center, a loose federation of 32 hospitals and medical colleges that adjoins the 22.6-acre tract.
Rescuers on Lake Michigan braved the wind and cold yesterday to search for three men presumed drowned after a fishing boat sank, and drifting snow continued to make travel hazardous throughout the Midwest. In Chicago, rescuers plucked three men from Lake Michigan on Friday after their commercial fishing boat sank in 6-foot waves and winds that reached 46 miles an hour. Divers resumed their search yesterday for three men who are now presumed dead. More than 40 people were injured in a 15-car crash near Marion, Indiana, and a woman was killed in another crash in north-central Indiana. Highways in the Detroit area had at least 40 accidents.
In the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, Georgia and Arizona play to a 13–13 tie.
Alabama wallops USC, 24–3, in the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu.
Ohio State edges BYU, 10–7, in the Citrus Bowl, in Orlando, Florida.
NFL Football:
AFC Wildcard Game:
This was the first postseason meeting between the Patriots and Jets. In the NFL’s first playoff game at Giants Stadium, the Patriots dominated the game by forcing five sacks and four turnovers from a Jets offense that had ranked #1 during the season for fewest turnovers lost (29). This was New England’s first playoff win since 1963. New England jumped to 3–0 lead in the first quarter after Tony Franklin made a 33-yard field goal. Then after New York scored on quarterback Ken O’Brien’s 11-yard touchdown pass to running back Johnny Hector, Franklin kicked his second field goal from 41 yards. Late in the second quarter, safety Fred Marion intercepted a pass from O’Brien and returned it 26 yards to the Jets 33-yard line. A few plays later, Jets defensive back Russell Carter failed to make contact with receiver Stanley Morgan while trying to jam him at the line of scrimmage, enabling Morgan to take off past Carter and haul in a 36-yard touchdown completion from Tony Eason, giving New England a 13–7 halftime lead. In the third quarter, Franklin made a 20-yard field goal to give the Patriots a 16–7 lead and on the ensuing kickoff, Hector was stripped of the ball by linebacker Johnny Rembert, who then picked up the fumble and returned it 15 yards for a touchdown, which gave the Patriots a commanding 23–7 lead. However, Hector returned the next kickoff 33 yards to the Pats 43-yard line. From there, Pat Ryan replaced O’Brien, who had been suffering from a concussion since the first half, and completed 5 of 7 passes on a 57-yard scoring drive, the last a 12-yard touchdown throw to tight end Mickey Shuler, making the score 23–14. But in the fourth quarter, Patriots linebacker Andre Tippett deflected a Ryan pass into the arms of defensive end Garin Veris, who returned the interception 18 yards to set up Franklin’s fourth field goal and finish off the scoring. Veris finished the game with three sacks and an interception. Eason completed 12 of 17 passes for 179 yards and a touchdown. Hector returned six kickoffs for 115 yards and added 24 more yards rushing and receiving. Jets receiver Al Toon set a franchise playoff record for receptions (9), good for 93 yards.
New England Patriots 26, New York Jets 14
Died:
Benny Morton, 78, American jazz trombonist (Teddy Wilson Sextet).
History Diaries 