The talks on intermediate-range nuclear weapons represent the most promising area for progress at the next round of the Geneva arms negotiations, which begin on Thursday, according to some Reagan Administration officials. But the officials also caution that there are several major stumbling blocks in the way of an agreement on reducing such weapons, including Soviet insistence that British and French nuclear arsenals are counted. The coming talks, which will also deal with intercontinental weapons and space weapons, are the first since the Geneva summit meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in November. Administration officials said the United States negotiators would introduce only minor adjustments to their position, because the Soviet Union had not yet responded in detail to a American proposal made at the end of the last session in early November.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, facing what is rapidly developing into her most severe political test since the Falkland War, rallied today to the defense of a key member of her Cabinet, who is accused of misleading the House of Commons. The Cabinet member, Leon Brittan, the Secretary for Trade and Industries, was already at the center of a furious controversy within the governing party over the future of a nearly bankrupt helicopter company when he stumbled into further trouble on Monday. He was forced to go before the House late Monday night to offer an explanation and apology for failing to acknowledge his awareness of a letter that had been the subject of three parliamentary questions in the afternoon. The letter had to do with the controversy over the Westland helicopter company, which led last week to the theatrical resignation of Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, who walked out of the Cabinet room at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s official residence.
The Polish Government said today that an underground Solidarity leader would face charges of illegal union activities and trying to set off social unrest. The Solidarity figure, Bogdan Borusewicz, whose arrest was announced Saturday by the official press agency, had been in hiding since Solidarity was outlawed in 1981. He was a key underground figure in Gdansk. The Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said Mr. Borusewicz, 37 years old, would be charged for his participation in the clandestine underground committee of Solidarity and for the “organization of various illegal activities to set off social unrest.” Mr. Borusewicz was one of the Solidarity leaders who signed a 1980 agreement with the Government that permitted the union to operate.
An Italian court trying seven men accused of plotting to assassinate Pope John Paul II refused today to extend the trial to hear testimony in New York about allegations that the Italian secret services fabricated evidence to implicate Bulgaria in the shooting. The court also refused to subject the state’s leading witness, Mehmet Ali Ağca, to psychiatric tests. Mr. Ağca’s erratic and inconsistent testimony is widely believed to have weakened the Government’s case against three Bulgarians and four Turks charged in the reported conspiracy. The court reconvened on Friday after a holiday recess to take testimony from a French lawyer, Christian Roulette. Mr. Roulette was quoted earlier by the official Bulgarian press service as having said he had obtained documents from a former Italian intelligence agent, Francesco Pazienza, that explained how Italy’s secret services enlisted Mr. Ağca in a plan to blame Bulgaria for the plot to shoot the Pope. According to the Bulgarian report, the documents were deposited in the safe of a Paris bank.
Italy has expelled about a dozen Palestinian students as part of a stepped-up campaign against terrorism, officials here said today. The move came as Prime Minister Bettino Craxi talked with the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, in Cairo. The authorities declined to renew the permits of the Palestinians because their identity papers had expired, said a spokesman for the Rome office of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The spokesman said that 12 to 15 students had been asked to leave over the last two months. He said “there is nothing exceptional” in the actions. The expulsions appeared to be part of several actions taken by Italy to tighten the entry of foreigners after recent terrorist actions.
Navy warships may be assigned to escort American merchant vessels in the Persian Gulf, State Departments officials said. The action was being considered by the Reagan Administration after it was caught off guard when an Iranian ship forced an American freighter to stop and submit to a search on Sunday. The Navy will offer new protection to U.S. merchant ships facing Iranian searches on the high seas and would probably use force to repel boarders if requested to do so by ship captains, a Pentagon official said. That position marked a hardening of the U.S. response to the Iranian navy’s boarding and searching Sunday of an American cargo ship. However, the State Department repeated its position that the search was apparently legal. “The policy is generally that if the captain of the (merchant) ship has a request from one of the belligerents for boarding and inspection, he may agree to that, or ask for assistance from our Navy,” the Pentagon official said.
Hundreds of Arabs threatening “blood and fire” surrounded Israeli members of Parliament on a new inspection tour of the Temple Mount, which is sacred to Muslims as well as to Jews. Police used tear gas to disperse the Arabs, and the Israelis were forced to flee. No injuries were reported in the incident, the second in less than a week. Witnesses said the Arabs angrily confronted the rightist Knesset members when one of them, Rabbi Eliezer Waldman of the rightist Tehiya party, tried to read a Jewish prayer. More than 600 policemen wielding riot sticks, tear gas and shields were needed to protect a 16-member parliamentary inspection party from Muslim protesters shouting “The Jews desecrate this place!” and “We are the sword of Mohammed!”
Two Libyan MIG-25 fighter planes intercepted a United States Navy surveillance plane Monday over the Mediterranean Sea, flying within 200 feet of the American aircraft and returning to Libya before American fighter planes reached the scene, Pentagon officials said today. A Navy official said the Libyan jets were in contact with a Soviet eavesdropping aircraft during the confrontation, in what he described as part of a “very unusual degree of cooperation” between Soviet and Libyan forces in the area over the last two weeks. A senior Pentagon official said the Libyan planes showed no sign of hostile intent, but that the encounter was being regarded with concern “given the state of tension between the two countries.” The officials at the Pentagon pointed to the confrontation as a sign of continuing friction in the Mediterranean since the December 27 terrorist attacks on airports in Vienna and Rome and the resulting speculation about an American military reprisal aimed at Libya.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi urged the Libyan people tonight to “wage economic warfare” against the United States and respond in kind to American sanctions against his country. “We must fight America with its own weapons,” the Libyan leader told a meeting of the Basic People’s Congress, one of 2,000 citizens groups that are ostensibly the decision-making bodies of his regime.The hourlong speech in Arabic, delivered from the back of the Congress room, was the closest that Colonel Qaddafi has come to suggesting that Libya would respond to the Reagan Administration’s decision January 7 to freeze Libyan assets in the United States by freezing American assets in Libya.
The Reagan Administration is considering assigning Navy warships to escort American merchant vessels in the Persian Gulf to prevent another boarding by armed Iranians, State Department officials said today. Administration officials acknowledged that Washington was caught off guard on Sunday when an Iranian Navy ship forced an American freighter, the President Taylor, to stop in the Gulf of Oman and submit to a search for war materiel for Iraq. When no such goods were found, the freighter was allowed to proceed to Fujaira, its desination in the United Arab Emirates. A possible future course of action, officials said, would be for the United States to declare that the cargoes of American merchant ships were free of war materiel for Iraq and to authorize Navy warships to use force if necessary to keep the Iranians away. This could lead to a confrontation with the Iranians if they pressed their right to board a ship, but Administration officials said they did not believe the Iranians force the issue.
A coup attempt in Southern Yemen by a hardline pro-Soviet Marxist faction led to street battles in the capital city, Aden, according to reports received in Cairo. Bombs were dropped on Aden’s airport and tanks exchanged fire with ships in the harbor as factions of the armed forces struggled for control of the Soviet-backed country. The fighting appeared to indicate a split in the 27,500-member, Soviet-equipped armed forces of Southern Yemen, a 19-year-old nation at the mouth of the Red Sea. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia on the north, Oman on the east and Yemen on the north and west. The Soviet Union maintains naval bases in Aden, once a major British base, and on the island of Socotra, strategically situated in the shipping lanes of the Arabian Sea. This evening, troops backed by armored personnel carriers were advancing on the Presidential Palace, according to reports sent to shipping offices in Bahrain. There were also continuing reports, which could not be confirmed, that the President, Ali Nasser Mohammed al-Hassani, had been gravely wounded in an assassination attempt. The uprising against President Hassani was announced Monday by the Government radio, which said that it had been thwarted and that the four leading plotters executed. The radio went off the air an hour and a half ahead of schedule on Monday night and did not resume broadcasts today.
Twenty Soviet soldiers who refused to join Afghan troops in fighting Muslim rebels were executed in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar last month, Western diplomats said in Islamabad, Pakistan. The Soviet soldiers apparently feared that the Afghan troops would defect to the rebels once fighting started, the diplomats said, quoting reports from the Afghan capital. The diplomats also reported such a defection, saying that 400 Hazara Shia tribesmen, given assault rifles and six months’ pay in early December to work as pro-government militiamen, went over to the rebel side near the southeastern city of Ghazni. The reports could not be confirmed.
South Korea has dropped its liberalization moves and is cracking down on political dissidents, student activists and labor unionists, resulting in greater human rights abuses over the last year, a rights monitoring group reported. Asia Watch, after a fact-finding visit to South Korea last year, said some South Koreans hold the United States responsible because it backs the regime of President Chun Doo Hwan. The group, which is funded by the Ford Foundation and by private donations, noted an absence of human rights in Communist North Korea.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos said that Gen. Fabian C. Ver may retire as armed forces commander before the Feb. 7 presidential election. If he does, Marcos said, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos will take command during the election. Ramos was acting commander last year when Ver, a confidant of Marcos, stood trial with 24 other soldiers on conspiracy charges in the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. All were acquitted.
A Guatemalan civilian took office as President after more than three decades of military-dominated rule. The new President, Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, said that years of “cruel and senseless violence” had left Guatemala facing spiritual and economic crisis. Vinicio Cerezo becomes only the second freely elected President of Guatemala since CIA-sponsored coup in 1954 In his inaugural speech, Mr. Cerezo said Guatemala’s treasury was empty, and he warned that the country faced a period of “great austerity and great sacrifice.” “There are no funds to begin new projects,” he said.
The President and First Lady participate in an arrival ceremony in honor of the President of the Republic of Ecuador and Mrs. Leon Febres-Cordero Ribadeneyra. President Reagan met today with the President of Ecuador, Leon Febres Cordero, and hailed him as a model leader in the Western Hemisphere. A soft snow fell and the temperature hovered at 23 degrees when Mr. Febres-Cordero arrived at the White House South Lawn for a welcoming ceremony with full military honors. At the 30-minute ceremony, hundreds of shivering guests clapped their hands for warmth and stamped their feet as Mr. Reagan contrasted the Ecuadorean leader’s “brave struggle” against international terrorism and narcotics trafficking with the “oppressive” Nicaraguan Government.
The worst street violence since the return of democracy two years ago erupted overnight as demonstrators protested a visit here by David Rockefeller, the former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. The protesters marched near the downtown American Club in Buenos Aires, where Mr. Rockefeller was meeting with American businessmen, burned an American flag, hurled rocks and eggs, smashed windows and set a car on fire. Soon after, the police moved in with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. Five people were reported hurt and 81 arrested.
The official Sudanese press agency said today that anti-government rebels had raided a town in southern Sudan and massacred 83 people, including patients in a hospital. The killings occurred late last month in the town of Yirol, the press agency said in a dispatch from Sudan’s southern regional capital of Juba. The agency quoted witnesses as saying that 65 of the victims were women, children and old men. There was no independent confirmation of the report. The agency said the raid was carried out by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, headed by a renegade army officer, Col. John Garang, who has been fighting for autonomy in the south since 1983. The Government evacuated residents from Yirol on December 25, the agency said.
Lesotho, a small country encircled by South Africa, was reported today to be running low on gasoline and other critical supplies because of a blockade by Pretoria that threatened to cripple the mountainous nation. A Government spokesman in Maseru, the capital, said today that the authorities had appealed to the United States and Britain to intercede with Pretoria to lift the blockade. The crackdown on rail and road traffic entering and leaving Lesotho has been in effect since January 1, apparently part of an effort by South Africa to force Lesotho to stop harboring Pretoria’s foes. In Cape Town, South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Roelof F. Botha, said at a news conference today, “This is not a blockade.” He said the tightening of border controls was designed to stem a flow of weapons into South Africa. Elsewhere, Chester A. Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, ended a three-day visit to South Africa, giving no indication that he had won major concessions on the country’s internal crisis or the future of South-West Africa.
Big cuts in nonmilitary programs will be required under the first automatic spending reductions required by the landmark 1985 budget balancing act. A total of $11.7 billion in cuts, which will be announced today, also includes the first annual reduction in the military budget in 13 years, according to Federal Government documents. Among the spending reductions outlined in the documents are these:
— The military budget, which will absorb half the total cut, will be reduced by $5.85 billion over all, and is expected to force reductions in the purchase of weapons, operations and maintaince, and research and development.
— Health programs will be reduced, although cuts are limited under the new law. Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly, will be pared by $375 million. Medical care for veterans and several smaller health programs will be cut by $33.4 million.
— Farm programs and other services under the Department of Agriculture face a reduction of $1.26 billion, although food stamps are not affected.
— Congress’s own budget will be reduced by $62 million, including reductions in the expense allowances for members of Congress and in their free mailing privileges.
— Funds for guaranteed student loans will be reduced by $9.6 million as part of the $171 million reduction in the Department of Education. Officials said this would force a small increase in the fees students must pay to banks administering the loans.
— Mass transit subsidies, including those to New York City, will be cut by nearly $33 million, which is a small portion of the $373 million cut in the Department of Transportation.
President Reagan is presented with the interim report of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime.
Organized crime’s control of labor unions and its monopoly power in certain industries is increasing, and law enforcement officials lack a coherent strategy to fight it, a Federal commission reported. In a sharply worded report to the White House, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime said mobsters were “increasingly using labor unions as a tool to obtain monopoly power” in some industries. The commission’s conclusions appeared to show the Government far from winning its war with the American Mafia. Noting that Jackie Presser, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, had been under Federal investigation because of charges of corruption, the report suggested that Administration officials who had “contacts” with him risked the appearance of impropriety.
The United States carried out as many as 19 unannounced underground nuclear tests from 1980 to 1984, according to a report by a private group. The report, “Unannounced U.S. Nuclear Tests,” was prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council and is based on information that was publicly available. The Administration has disclosed that it carried out 82 underground nuclear weapon tests from 1980 to 1984, including eight that were conducted for Britain. But the council’s report says that from 12 to 19 unannounced tests were also conducted in that period.
Albert V. Casey, the new Postmaster General, will leave the post in September to accept a professorship at Southern Methodist University’s business school, postal officials said today. Mr. Casey was appointed last Tuesday by the board of governors of the United States Postal Service after ousting Paul N. Carlin, who served barely one year as Postmaster General amid complaints that he was not moving fast enough to improve the agency.
Neo-Nazi groups such as The Order are a growing concern among Jews, even though reports of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and abuse declined 11% nationwide last year, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith said in Chicago. There were 638 reports of vandalism against Jewish homes and institutions in 34 states and Washington, D.C., in 1985, down from 715 in 1984, according to the league’s annual audit of anti-Semitic activity. In 1985, the league’s 30 regional offices also reported 306 anti-Semitic assaults, threats and incidents of harassment, including abusive letters and phone calls, a decrease of 17% from the previous year.
Negotiators for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers have accepted a proposal from the Amoco Corporation for a two-year contract that union leaders said would lead to a settlement of a nationwide contract dispute between 46,500 workers and 80 petroleum companies. The union’s 12-member national bargaining committee approved the proposed pact on Monday. The agreement, subject to ratification by 4,800 employees of Amoco, formerly the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), includes a $1,000 lump-sum payment for each employee in the first year of the contract, a 2 percent raise the second year and increases in health benefits. “We expect it is a pattern for the rest of the contracts,” said Joseph Misbrener, president of the union. In the past, an agreement with one major producer has set the pattern for the industry. The Amoco pact will mean an additional 28 cents an hour in its second year, based on wages that now average $14.16 an hour, Mr. Misbrener said. The union members have remained at their jobs since the last two-year contract expired six days ago.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, assuming the post of interim pastor at a troubled fundamentalist church wracked by controversy since its founder publicly confessed to adultery, said he hoped to bring about “spiritual healing” in the congregation. Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, said at a news conference at the Bangor, Maine, Baptist Church that he was there because “the church and the cause of Christ in New England have both suffered a great blow.” The Rev. Herman C. (Buddy) Frankland left the area after admitting in October that he had an affair with a church member.
Anti-Semitic incidents against Jews and Jewish property in the United States decreased significantly last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the league, said last year’s decline continued a general downward trend, interrupted only by a slight increase in 1984, in anti-Semitic incidents over the last four years. The findings, based on an audit prepared by the league’s civil rights division from reports by 30 regional offices, were divided into two types: vandalism against Jewish property and harrassments, threats and assaults against Jews and Jewish property. Last year there were 638 reported incidents of vandalism against Jewish property in 32 states and the District of Columbia, an 11 percent decline from the 1984 total of 715 incidents. There were 306 incidents of harrassments, threats and assaults against Jews and Jewish property in 26 states and the District in 1985, Mr. Perlmutter said, a decline of 17 percent from the 1984 total of 369 such incidents.
The Agriculture Department said it has approved the use of low-dose irradiation to sexually sterilize microscopic worms in fresh pork that otherwise could reproduce and cause trichinosis among consumers. Officials said the USDA rule permitting irradiation will go into effect today but no company has yet been approved to use the process, which does not make food radioactive.
The Customs Services’ chief protested proposed cuts in parts of his agency’s 1987 budget, saying the reductions would devastate drug enforcement efforts. The Acting Commissioner, Alfred R. De Angelus, said a suggested 40 percent cut in air services would leave the Southwest border with no airborne drug trafficking detection most of next year.
Courts must reverse convictions of any defendant indicted by a grand jury from which members of his own race were unconstitutionally excluded, even if guilt was clear and the trial was fair, the Supreme Court ruled. The Court’s 6-to-3 decision reversed the 1963 murder conviction of a black prisoner in California for stabbing to death a 15-year-old girl. He had been indicted by a grand jury from which, the Court held, blacks had been unconstitutionally excluded. The decision was largely a reaffirmation of current law, in particular a 1979 Supreme Court ruling, and was a rejection of prosecution arguments calling for a departure from the Court’s grand jury precedents.
Fishing boat owners in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the nation’s richest seaport, stalked out of contract talks, dashing hopes that a 19-day-old fishermen’s strike over money might be nearing an end. “I felt that no further progress could be made, so we terminated the session,” said Dave Barnet, a spokesman for the Seafood Producers Association. He added that he would meet with his clients Thursday before agreeing to new negotiations with the fishermen.
Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, faced by critics who are urging him not to seek a record fifth term, emerged after a weeklong hospital stay to deliver a “state of the state” speech in Montgomery that did not close the door on a 1986 reelection bid. Wallace, 66, included no definitive statement about a reelection effort in his speech but has indicated he will announce a decision before month’s end, Press Secretary Billy Joe Camp said. Wallace was treated for a urinary tract infection.
A cable television counterattack against owners of backyard satellite dishes begins today as Home Box Office and Cinemax, the leading movie and entertainment pay-TV cable channels, begin scrambling the signals that the dish owners are receiving free.
Icy winds strafed the East Coast, sending temperatures plunging to 26 below zero in Saranac Lake, New York, the coldest spot in the nation. Temperatures dipped below zero and into the single digits from Minnesota across the Great Lakes to New England. Winds gusting to 30 mph created bitter wind-chill readings under 60 below, the National Weather Service said. In New York, an overnight low of 16 with wind chills of 25 below zero sent 9,000 people to the city’s 20 public shelters. The cold air also stung the South overnight, dipping temperatures into the teens in the Tennessee mountains and into the 20s in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
Donna Reed, the Academy Award-winning actress and American television’s quintessential wife and mother, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 64. Widely remembered for the television comedy series that bore her name, Miss Reed starred in more than 40 movies, including “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “From Here to Eternity.”
Picking second in the January draft, the Pirates go for blood lines, selecting Moises Alou. The Indians, selecting first, take pitcher Jeff Shaw.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1519.04 (-1.49)
Born:
Victor Abiamiri, NFL defensive end (Philadelphia Eagles), in Baltimore, Maryland.
Marshay Green, NFL cornerback (Arizona Cardinals, Indianapolis Colts), in Bastrop, Louisiana.
Gary Brolsma, American internet celebrity (Numa Numa), in Saddle Brook, New Jersey.
Died:
Donna Reed, 64, American actress (“From Here to Eternity”; “It’s a Wonderful Life”; “The Donna Reed Show”), of cancer.
Daniel Balavoine, 33, French pop-rock and world music singer-songwriter (“S.O.S. d’un terrien en détresse”; “Sauver l’amour”), in a helicopter crash in Africa.
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