President Reagan’s decision against military reprisal for the terrorist attacks on the airports in Rome and Vienna followed 11 days of discussion and debate. He told close aides that after weighing options proposed by the Pentagon, he was reluctant to take what a ranking White House aide termed “the macho response” to Libya for its purported role in the attacks. Mr. Reagan and his aides were said to have concluded that Americans in Libya would be in danger if the United States took military action. In a Los Angeles hotel suite the day of the attack President Reagan gazed at the television pictures of the airport carnage with “revulsion” and “anger,” a close aide said. Almost immediately the President, who was in California for the New Year holiday, began receiving option papers on possible use of force and considered some type of armed reprisal. Yet one week later, while returning home to Washington from a brief official visit to Mexico, Mr. Reagan sat in a front cabin of Air Force One and informed his closest aides that he was reluctant to take what a ranking White House aide termed “the macho response” to Libya.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi tonight invited President Reagan to come sit in his tent in Tripoli and see for himself that he is not a terrorist. “If Reagan came here, he would change his mind,” Colonel Qaddafi said in an interview tonight with five reporters in his Bedouin tent, which is set up inside the heavily fortified Babel-Azziziya military barracks. “He would see that I don’t live in trenches and wear hand grenades in my belt and a pistol,” the colonel said.
The Communist Party daily newspaper Pravda reported that the Soviet Union failed to meet oil-production targets for 1985 and expressed concern that output is already lagging behind planned levels for 1986. In a front-page article, the authoritative Soviet paper criticized officials of the oil industry for foot-dragging in carrying out plans to increase production. Similar criticism was leveled in a separate article in the newspaper Soviet Russia.
Education Secretary William J. Bennett charged yesterday that ABC Television had placed American television programming in danger of Soviet censorship by postponing production of a mini-series after Moscow threatened reprisals if it were broadcast. “This is a bad lesson for our children,” Mr. Bennett said in a speech in Manhattan. “The American people might be denied a television series because the Kremlin does not like it.”
The U.S. and Greece signed a pact for protecting military technology that opens the way for the sale of 40 F-16’s to Greece, a State Department official said. The sale of the advanced fighter planes had been pending for more than a year. Greece signed the General Security of Military Information Agreement, which is being negotiated with all NATO allies of the United States, the official said. The State Department official said there had been concern in the Administration, particularly at the Defense Department, over Greece’s ability to protect advanced military technology from Soviet agents.
The Polish authorities announced the arrest today of the leader of the Solidarity underground in the Gdansk region, who went into hiding when martial law was declared four years ago. The Solidarity figure, Bogdan Borusewicz, was a member of the clandestine provisional committee that administers Solidarity’s underground, collecting dues from supporters at factories and organizing an extensive network of illegal publications. No details were given of the circumstances of Mr. Borusewicz’s arrest, but the official Polish press agency announced his arrest on the eve of a scheduled mass for political prisoners at St. Brigida’s Church in Gdansk, the Baltic port. Opposition figures in the Gdansk region said the news of Mr. Borusewicz’s capture had been severely demoralizing. The opposition sources also reported that the authorities had been pressing the Rev. Henryk Jankowski, perhaps Poland’s most outspokenly pro-Solidarity priest, to curb the mass for prisoners.
The presidential election campaign opened in Portugal, with four candidates hoping to become the first civilian head of state in 60 years. Former Prime Minister Mario Soares, 61, a Socialist and a major force in Portuguese politics since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, is competing against a popular right-wing candidate, former Defense Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral, and two leftists-Socialist Party co-founder Francisco Salgado Zenha and former interim Prime Minister Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo. The first round of voting January 26 is not expected to produce a majority for any candidate, and a runoff is expected.
Key Labor and Likud Cabinet ministers will meet Sunday to decide whether Israel should submit a longstanding border dispute with Egypt to international arbitration. Government sources said it was still not clear whether the Labor ministers, who favor arbitration, will be able to reach consensus with the Likud ministers, who will agree to arbitration only with stringent conditions attached. “Anything can happen tomorrow,” said a senior Israeli official close to Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a member of Likud. “On the one hand, they might meet and agree on everything without any problems. On the other hand, Peres might not be able to satisfy Shamir’s conditions and the whole thing could blow up into a Cabinet crisis.”
Syrian officials were stunned and dismayed by the Reagan Administration’s warning that sanctions similar to those imposed on Libya might be applied to Syria. Western diplomats shared Syria’s shock. Although the American officials stressed Friday that there were no immediate plans to impose sanctions against the Syrians, officials and diplomats here said today that the remarks could only damage the already strained relations between the United States and Syria. “No matter what we do, our thoughts are not listened to in the United States,” a close aide to President Hafez al-Assad said in an interview. “If we are helping you to regain your kidnapped people and you continue to make senseless speculations, what can we now do for them? And what should we expect from you?” Syria has been involved in delicate negotiations to free four Frenchmen and six Americans held by radical Islamic groups in Lebanon, and it helped negotiate the release of Americans on a Trans World Airlines hijacked to Beirut last June. Some officials have expressed disappointment that these actions did not result in lavish praise from Washington.
Syrian President Hafez Assad indicated to Jordan’s King Hussein recently that he will accede to negotiations with Israel on the occupied Golan Heights, the weekly Egyptian newspaper Akhbar El Yom reported. It quoted sources close to Assad as giving Hussein “a strong impression that he is striving at present to regain the Golan by peaceful methods and that he will accept negotiations with Israel at the appropriate time.”
Nabih Berri, leader of the powerful Lebanese Amal militia, offered to get a doctor to a French kidnap victim reported to be seriously ill. The Shia Muslim leader said, “I am awaiting word from the kidnapers so that he can visit the hostages and treat whoever is ill.” The offer came a day after the Islamic Jihad movement said the health of one of the four French citizens it holds had “deteriorated suddenly and seriously.” The hostage was not identified but is believed to be diplomat Marcel Carton, 62.
Babrak Karmal, the Afghan leader, has said that he rejects an offer by President Reagan to serve as a guarantor of a settlement of the war in his country. In an interview in Kabul published today in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, Mr. Karmal accused Washington of stubbornly ignoring the political and social realities in Afghanistan.
Punjabi authorities asked New Delhi to send more than 6,000 additional soldiers to the province because they expect another violent confrontation with Sikhs who have vowed to destroy a holy shrine, the police said today. Sikh radicals said that on January 26, India’s Republic Day, they plan to demolish and rebuild the Akal Takht, a sacred building inside the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple is the Sikhs’ holiest shrine. Sikh extremists held protests and set up road blocks Friday in a conflict with Sikh moderates, who have been governing the Sikh-dominated Punjab since they won state elections in September. The four-story Akal Takht is a place of confession, penance and baptism for Sikhs, a religious sect whose members make up 2 percent of India’s population of 750 million.
Communist North Korea announced that it will refrain from holding large-scale military exercises after February 1 and asked South Korea also to suspend maneuvers to reduce tension, according to a statement by the North Korean Foreign Affairs Ministry monitored in Tokyo. Japanese experts on North Korean affairs said the proposal is apparently aimed at halting the 11th annual U.S.-South Korean military exercise “Team Spirit,” expected to begin February 1 and end in mid-April.
A 6,200-ton Echo II class Soviet submarine, apparently disabled, was spotted by Japanese patrol planes being towed by a Soviet salvage ship about 280 miles northwest of Okinawa in the East China Sea, Japanese navy officials said. A third Soviet vessel, a 15,000-ton Malina class missile support ship, was accompanying the nuclear-powered submarine, which is equipped to carry SSN-3 and SSN-12 cruise missiles, officials said.
Corazon C. Aquino, the opposition presidential candidate, drew the biggest crowds of the month-old campaign today and repeated her warning that President Ferdinand E. Marcos could impose martial law to halt the election if he fears he might lose. At a news conference after a 10-mile motorcade that drew 200,000 people, Mrs. Aquino said, “I think maybe Marcos is running scared, and he is going to create an artificial situation to justify” imposing martial law. Mr. Marcos held a news conference Friday to deny that he planned to impose martial law, but left open the possibility of such a move if “a miracle happens and the N.P.A. starts attacking the cities.” The N.P.A. is the Communist New People’s Army.
Tornadoes hit Bermuda’s south and north shores today, tearing roofs from at least 30 homes, sinking boats and causing other damage, officials said. No casualties were reported. This is the off-season for tourists on the island, a British dependency that thrives on tourism. Tornadoes are very unusual for Bermuda, which is in the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. A tornado struck the Devonshire area on the south shore this morning, and another touched down on the north at St. David’s less than two hours later, the weather service and the police said. A police spokesman, Sgt. Roger Sherratt, said the first tornado “cut across the island, ripping off the roofs of at least 30 houses.”
Leftist guerrillas killed 426 Salvadoran soldiers and wounded 1,683 in 1985, according to the Salvadoran Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Adolfo Blandon. The army killed 1,034 guerrillas and wounded an unknown number of others in the last year, General Blandon said at a news conference that was held Friday near the Guazapa volcano, a major rebel base about 15 miles north of the capital of San Salvador. The figures, which cannot be independently verified, show that a high level of combat is still taking place in the six-year-old civil war. But they also indicate that the rebels, while inflicting considerable casualties on Government forces, are not killing or wounding enough soldiers to be able to defeat the army in the “long war of attrition” that the rebels have pledged to wage.
Most of the 17,000 coca-leaf farmers who had encircled a camp of 245 narcotics officers quit their siege today, officials said, adding that military intervention would not be needed. Edgar Merwin, a United States adviser to the elite narcotics unit, which is known as the “Leopards” and is financed by Washington, said fewer than 100 growers still surrounded the camp, although roads to the camp remained blocked and farm leaders threatened violence if the police did not leave the area. The officers have been trapped in the remote camp in central Bolivia since Tuesday by coca farmers angered by the Government campaign to disrupt cocaine production. Cocaine is made from the coca leaf.
Venezuelan President Jaime Lusinchi told eight Latin American foreign ministers, gathered in his country in an attempt to breathe new life into the Contadora initiative, that the group’s efforts for peace in Central America must continue. “Contadora has not died, nor can it die, because Contadora is more than an ideal of peace, it is a will, a conviction,” he said. The initiative is sagging after three years of fruitless work since its creation by Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela.
Tornadoes hit Bermuda’s south and north shores today, tearing roofs from at least 30 homes, sinking boats and causing other damage, officials said. No casualties were reported. This is the off-season for tourists on the island, a British dependency that thrives on tourism. Tornadoes are very unusual for Bermuda, which is in the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. A tornado struck the Devonshire area on the south shore this morning, and another touched down on the north at St. David’s less than two hours later, the weather service and the police said. A police spokesman, Sgt. Roger Sherratt, said the first tornado “cut across the island, ripping off the roofs of at least 30 houses.” The Sonesta Beach Hotel, popular with tourists, is in Devonshire. No damage was reported there.
Several Federal programs would end and many Government assets would be sold under President Reagan’s budget proposal for 1987, White House officials said, in an effort to achieve more than a third of the $50 billion in savings that a new budget-balancing law requires. Mr. Reagan’s approach will be similar to one that Congress rejected last year, said the officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified. Mr. Reagan, in the budget he will submit to Congress in three weeks, will call for another reduction of about the same size to come from cuts in programs that would be maintained. Slightly less than one-fourth of the $50 billion would be generated through the large-scale sale of Federal assets, which a high-ranking official said was being undertaken because “we need the money.”
President Reagan makes a radio address to the Nation on the nation’s economy. In his weekly radio address today, the President provided a preview of the budget by saying he would reject any tax increase and would insist on the “maintenance of a strong defense.” Administration officials said Mr. Reagan would insist on a 3 percent rise in military spending in addition to an increase to account for inflation. “Instead,” Mr. Reagan said, “our Administration will meet its Gramm-Rudman-Hollings obligations by submitting budgets which eliminate Government inefficiency and curtail needless expenses like vast amounts for Amtrak and subsidies for those who don’t need them.”
The President and First Lady watch the movie “Young Sherlock Holmes.”
A forecast of improved weather brightened NASA’s hopes that it could launch the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven today after a frustrating series of delays. “The weather looks good and we’re going to go for it,” said Lisa Malone, a spokeswoman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The launching had been postponed seven times, four times in the last week. If Columbia misses tomorrow’s launching time, set for 3: 55 AM PST, officials feared it could disrupt NASA’s busy schedule of 15 shuttle launchings planned this year.
Shortly after noon today L. Douglas Wilder, the grandson of a slave, was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, becoming the first black to hold a statewide executive office in the South since Reconstruction. Mr. Wilder, raising his right hand before thousands of Virginians gathered around the State Capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson, shared the inaugural stage with two other Democrats taking office, Governor Gerald L. Baliles and Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, the first woman to win statewide office in Virginia. Mr. Baliles said the inauguration of a black and a woman “ratifies our long, sometimes painful but morally imperative journey from the darkness of subjugation and discrimination into the sunlight of a fuller liberty.” The Democrats’ celebration today was in sharp contrast to their mood this time last year, when 11 senior state Democrats met secretly and sent Mr. Wilder a message urging him not to seek the nominaton. There was widespread concern that Mr. Wilder’s nomination could doom the ticket’s chances in the 1985 election.
A good-neighbor scholarship plan is to begin tomorrow, when more than 150 college students from seven Central American countries, including Nicaragua, are to arrive in Miami to take part in the program, through which Washington hopes to improve relations and counter Soviet influence in Central America.
A retrial for Governor Edwin W. Edwards of Louisiana and his co-defendants on charges of racketeering and fraud has been decided on by John Volz, the United States Attorney in New Orleans. Mr. Edwards, a Democrat now in his third term, was tried on the charges last fall but the trial ended December 18 with a deadlocked jury. At a news conference in his office today, Mr. Volz said he had decided to retry the case after “careful consideration and re-evaluation and consultation” with officials from the Department of Justice. “The jury’s failure to reach a decision doesn’t change the underlying facts which support these charges,” he said. Mr. Edwards charged Mr. Volz was harassing Louisiana Democrats.
AIDS is a “time bomb” for the nation’s hospitals, threatening to burden them with expensive health care and waves of costly lawsuits, a report by the American Hospital Association said. The report predicts two waves of lawsuits against hospitals. The first may be over employment issues, such as the dismissal of workers who develop AIDS or the rights of hospitals to screen blood of workers. The second wave may come from patients over such things as alleged hospital negligence over the failure to inform patients of positive AIDS test results or failure to protect patients from contracting AIDS in the hospital.
Inmates took over a cellblock at a maximum-security prison for more than two hours in Pendleton, Indiana, leaving one inmate dead and four guards and 14 prisoners injured, authorities said. The incident began with a fight between inmates and led to a takeover of “G” cellblock, authorities said. One inmate died of stab wounds to his head, said Madison County Coroner John Noffze, who refused to identify the victim. Four guards and an inmate were treated at St. John’s Medical Center in nearby Anderson, a hospital spokeswoman said.
A fire that officials said was apparently started by a wood-burning stove swept through an isolated farmhouse near Boyds, Maryland early today, killing two children and four adults and injuring five others, officials said. One woman ran half a mile about 2:30 AM to the closest neighbor to summon firefighters said Captain Ray Mulhall, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire Department. Firefighters drove tank trucks carrying water to the wooden farmhouse, but were unable to reach the six people trapped inside or save the two-story structure, he said. One of the injured, Beverly Seabolt, 22 years old, was flown by helicopter from Shady Grove Adventist Hospital to the Washington Hospital Center, where officials said she was in critical condition. Harold Leet of Gaithersburg, Maryland, who owns the 360-acre farm, said he rented the seven-room house last November to a man who rented rooms without his permission. It appeared some of the occupants were asleep when the fire broke out, Captain Mulhall said.
Discovery of a second bacterial toxin that causes toxic shock syndrome might help doctors diagnose the illness, a researcher says. Dr. Patrick M. Schlievert of the University of Minnesota said the second toxin, known as enterotoxin B, may account for up to 60% of toxic shock syndrome cases in non-menstrual patients. Until now, toxic shock syndrome had been associated only with a toxin called toxic shock syndrome toxin 1. It is believed responsible for all toxic shock cases found in menstruating women using tampons.
Forty-six pounds of radioactive uranium hexafluoride gas — the substance that killed an atomic plant worker in Oklahoma this month — leaked from a uranium enrichment plant at Piketon, Ohio, in one week, the Department of Energy, which owns the plant, said. Although the plant has special filters to monitor leaks, the leak went undetected for two weeks, apparently, the department said, because of vacations during the holiday season. Plant spokesmen said that the gas is only slightly radioactive.
Detroit Edison Co. could be fined up to $100,000 for each of 26 operating violations found at its Fermi II nuclear power plant at Monroe, Michigan, last year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. An NRC report said at least seven of the violations were serious and “collectively represented a breakdown in… controls designed to safely operate the plant.” The plant, which has not yet been brought into full production, has been shut down for maintenance since October 10. Detroit Edison has been given until January 23 to prepare a plan for eliminating errors in the plant’s operations.
A woman was arraigned in Portland, Oregon, on a fugitive warrant accusing her of conspiring to kidnap Florida Governor Bob Graham and demand he release her husband from prison. Vicki Jill Crawford, 39, intended to demand the release of her husband, Howard, 44, in exchange for the governor’s freedom, officials said. Her husband is serving a 12-year prison term in Florida for attempting to hire a hit man to kill 29 disgruntled customers who complained they were bilked by a bogus employment agency he ran in Jacksonville.
Edmond L. Browning took office as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in a ceremony at Washington Cathedral in Washington. Bishop Browning, who was head of the Diocese of Hawaii since 1976, is expected during his 12-year term to move his church in a more liberal direction on such internal issues as the roles of women and homosexuals in the church and on social and international matters.
Each night over the past week, in backyards and on hillsides, at college observatories and at gatherings of astronomy buffs, people looked to the southwest for what may have been their sole or last glimpse of Halley’s comet. They knew they should not expect much because the comet was still dim and fuzzy, and few were disappointed. They saw enough, they said, to satisfy curiosity and fulfill an obligation. They could forever say they had seen the famous comet that comes once every 76 years. Not to have taken the trouble, many said, would have been unthinkable.
Born:
Rachel Riley, English television presenter and mathematician (“Countdown”, “8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown”), in Rochford, England, United Kingdom.
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