A plan to eliminate all nuclear arms by the end of the century and a three-month extension of a Soviet moratorium on nuclear tests were proposed by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. A statement by Mr. Gorbachev also included what diplomats said was a potentially new Soviet stance on medium-range arms in Europe. But the Soviet leader declared that his disarmament process could start only if the United States joined in renouncing the testing and deployment of what he called “space strike weapons.” That is the Soviet reference to President Reagan’s research program on space-based defenses. Mr. Reagan has repeatedly insisted that the space defense program, popularly known as Star Wars, is not negotiable, and the dispute has blocked substantive movement at the Geneva arms talks. Mr. Gorbachev described his proposal as the most important of several foreign policy decisions made by the Politburo at the start of 1986.
The proposal broadly covered all aspects of disarmament and was based mostly on existing Soviet positions. Diplomats said it differed from previous Soviet calls for total nuclear disarmament largely in fixing stages and deadlines for the process. In his proposals for the elimination of medium-range missiles in Europe, however, Mr. Gorbachev made what Western experts thought could be a significant departure. Outlining the first stage of his program, Mr. Gorbachev called for the “complete elimination of intermediate-range missiles of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. in the European zone, both ballistic and cruise missiles, as a first step toward ridding the European continent of nuclear weapons.” At the same time, he said, Britain and France would pledge not to enlarge their nuclear arsenals.
The stance appeared to resemble the offer that President Reagan made, and the Soviet negotiators rejected, at the Geneva talks on medium-range arms, which collapsed in November 1983 when the Russians walked out. Mr. Reagan proposed in 1981 that the United States would abandon plans to deploy new medium-range missiles in Europe if the Russians dismantled their SS-20 medium-range missiles, a proposal that came to be known as the zero option. Moscow, however, insisted that it should maintain enough SS-20’s to counter the 162 nuclear missiles in the British and French arsenals. The talks faltered, the Americans began deploying new missiles and the Russians walked out. The position outlined by Mr. Gorbachev today seemed to incorporate aspects of the zero option in calling for the elimination of all Soviet and American rockets first, without any regard in the first stage for the British and French arms.
President Reagan welcomed the comprehensive arms-control plan suggested by the Kremlin and said the Administration would study it carefully. White House officials said Mr. Reagan received a letter from Mr. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, outlining the proposals though diplomatic channels shortly before they were published. “I welcome the Soviet’s latest response and hope that it represents a helpful further step in the process,” Mr. Reagan said. “We, together with our allies, will give careful study to General Secretary Gorbachev’s suggestions.” Administration officials said they were particularly intrigued by Mr. Gorbachev’s proposals related to medium-range weapons in Europe. “The most significant movement appears to have taken place in the area of intermediate-range nuclear forces, although the language requires clarification,” said one official who is involved in arms-control issues.
The Soviet Union has launched its first full-scale aircraft carrier from a shipyard on the Black Sea and has begun building a second, the Pentagon said today. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said the development of carriers able to launch jet fighters represented a major step in the evolution of the Soviet Navy into a more aggressive force that could range far from home. Some Navy officers and private experts, however, predicted that the carriers would be primarily used in the Norwegian Sea and other waters near the Soviet Union, to hold the United States Navy at bay in the event of a conventional war. Pentagon officials said today that the new carrier would not be fully operational until the early 1990’s. Navy officials and Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have publicly said that it will most likely be 10 years before the carrier and its aircraft are able to operate proficiently.
Yelena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, was up and walking around her hospital room two days after coronary bypass surgery and may be back at her family’s home outside Boston as early as next week, hospital officials said. “We’re still saying the typical (checkout) time would be about the middle of next week,” Massachusetts General Hospital spokesman Martin Bander said. “It could go on either side of that…if she continues to stay on target as she is now.”
A West German noncommissioned army officer in a sensitive position apparently defected to East Germany with his family, the West German news service DPA reported. The agency, in a dispatch attributed to reliable sources, said that the 25-year-old soldier disappeared from his unit in Munich on December 28. A Defense Ministry spokesman in Bonn confirmed that the unnamed soldier and his family are missing but added that it is too early to determine if espionage and defection are involved.
New disclosures and charges added today to the political furor over the future of an insolvent helicopter company, appearing to undercut the position of the Cabinet minister responsible for carrying out Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the affair. The minister, Leon Brittan, was at Mrs. Thatcher’s side during a full-scale debate in the House of Commons when she sought to show that her Government had followed a consistent policy of allowing the board and shareholders of the Westland company to make their own choices about its future. But the publication of a letter from the chairman of British Aerospace, a company involved in one of two competing rescue bids for Westland, appeared to contradict both her argument and Mr. Brittan’s version of events. Mr. Brittan, who has been regarded as one of the Cabinet’s best minds but least accomplished public performers, was moved from the Home Ministry to the Department of Trade and Industries four months ago to get him out of the limelight.
The executive board of the World Health Organization, which says that smoking kills 1 million people each year, issued a sweeping condemnation of the use of tobacco. The 31-member board of the U.N. specialized agency unanimously adopted a resolution expressing deep concern over the “current pandemic of smoking and other forms of tobacco use.” The presence of carcinogens and other toxic substances in tobacco smoke and the direct link between tobacco and a range of fatal and disabling diseases have been scientifically proven, the resolution said.
Prominent leaders of the Liberal Party who opposed its partnership with Herut in the Likud bloc announced the establishment today of an independent party to be called the Liberal Center. The defectors included Arye Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Executive who was named chairman of the new party, and Mayor Shlomo Lahat of Tel Aviv, who will top the list of candidates in the next national elections.
Christian supporters of a Syrian-sponsored pact for peace in Lebanon were defeated today in fierce clashes that engulfed Christian areas north and northeast of here. The development was widely viewed as a major, and possibly fatal, blow to the Syrian-brokered accord, which entailed drastic changes in Lebanon’s 42-year-old political system. It was based parity in sharing of power between Moslems and Christians. President Amin Gemayel, a Christian and leader of the Phalangist Party, opposed the main provisions of the pact, which was supported by another Christian leader, Elie Hobeika, head of the militia known as the Lebanese Forces. Mr. Hobeika signed the accord last month, along with the leaders of the mainstream Shiite movement, Amal, and the Progressive Socialist Party, a Druze organization. Mr. Gemayel and other prominent Christian leaders complained that the pact was unfair to the Christians in general and in particular to the Maronite Catholics, the sect to which Mr. Gemayel and the majority of Phalange leaders belong. Mr. Hobeika, like Mr. Gemayel a Maronite, had argued that without adjusting the political order there can be no end to the civil war, now in its 11th year.
Libya will train, arm and protect Palestinians and other Arab volunteers for “suicide and terrorist missions,” Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi declared. In a turnaround from his remarks in recent days, the Libyan leader said his nation would become “a base for the liberation of Palestine.” The Libyan leader made the declaration in a two-hour speech to 3,000 young people at the People’s Congress Building in downtown Tripoli. The speech was an abrupt about-face in tone and substance from the Libyan leader’s remarks in recent days. They had been, for the most part, somewhat conciliatory toward the United States.
President Reagan participates in a meeting regarding upcoming consultations with allies on the Libyan sanctions and counterterrorism policies.
The United States “cannot wait for absolute certainty and clarity” before using military force to strike at terrorist groups or countries that support them, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said. State Department officials said Mr. Shultz’s remarks mirrored arguments he made during Administration debates on dealing with Libya. He also seemed to take issue with the view of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain that such retaliation would violate international law. In a speech at a military installation here in which he repeated his call for tougher American responses to terrorism, Mr. Shultz did not specifically criticize President Reagan’s decision nine days ago not to use force against Libya. The Administration says Libya supports the Abu Nidal group, which American authorities believe was behind the attacks December 27 at the Rome and Vienna airports, which left 19 dead, including 4 gunmen.
Fighting continued for a third day in Southern Yemen today between supporters of the Marxist Government of President Ali Nasser Mohammed al-Hassani and Communist hard-liners trying to mount a coup, according to reports reaching here. The 27,500-man Soviet-equipped military was apparently divided in its loyalties, and navy gunboats were said to be shelling army tanks on shore, while some air force planes bombed the airport and the harbor. Street battles flared intermittently in the capital, Aden, according to reports from diplomats there. The balance of power remained uncertain tonight. The turbulent, impoverished Arabian Sea nation, which has the only Marxist Government in the Arab world, was virtually cut off from the outside world for a third day.
Pakistani gunners shot down an Afghan MIG-21 when it intruded a short distance into Pakistan’s airspace, officials in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar said. They said it crashed on the Afghan side of the border after being hit near Kharlachi, 95 miles west of Peshawar. A military spokesman refused to confirm or deny the report. Pakistan has warned Afghanistan that it would shoot down intruding planes attacking Afghan rebels who are based in and supplied from Pakistan.
Indian and Pakistani diplomats will meet Saturday in Islamabad to try to draft a peace treaty, officials said. The neighboring nations have clashed in three wars in the last 38 years. Romesh Bhandar, India’s minister of foreign affairs, will meet his Pakistani counterpart, Niaz A. N. Naik, to discuss combining a Pakistani draft and an Indian proposal. The two sides exchanged the documents three years ago but never finalized them.
China today rejected a Soviet proposal that the two nations sign a mutual nonaggression treaty, saying Moscow had more concrete ways of improving relations if it chose to exercise them. The dismissal of a proposal that Moscow has been promoting since at least 1974 was not in itself surprising, since the Chinese have shied away from the idea from the start. What was striking was that China revived the matter in public and in peremptory terms that have been little used recently as relations have steadily improved. The issue was raised at a weekly Foreign Ministry news briefing that the Government often uses to focus attention on topics that would otherwise attract little notice. The official conducting the briefing, Li Zhaoxing, volunteered the Chinese position after saying there had been queries about it from reporters in Peking.
The Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, arrived in Tokyo today and promptly urged the Japanese not to take part in the United States space defense program. In a two-and-a-half hour meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Shintaro Abe, Mr. Shevardnadze said that although the Soviet Union did not expect Japan to criticize the American Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly called “Star Wars,” it hoped Japan would carefully consider its own national interests before joining the project, according to Japanese Foreign Ministry officials. Mr. Abe replied that Japan would make an independent decision whether to join the research phase of the space-based anti-missile program, Japanese officials said.
Gunmen in the Philippines today shot dead a local politician who had endorsed the opposition candidate for president, Corazon C. Aquino, the police and opposition officials said. It was the first killing believed linked to the presidential election campaign. An opposition leader identified the victim as Jeremias de Jesus. The opposition leader, former Congressman Jose Yap, said Mr. de Jesus was killed a day after he told the United States Embassy that armed men were intimidating opponents of President Ferdinand E. Marcos in Tarlac, Mrs. Aquino’s home province. Mr. Yap, who works with Mrs. Aquino, also said he was checking reports that the driver of Mr. de Jesus’s vehicle had been killed in the shooting. Assemblyman Luis Villafuerte, quoting a report from opposition leaders, said Mr. de Jesus had been killed while aboard a jeep in Capas municipality, 55 miles north of Manila.
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has found evidence that a Philippine banker said to handle the personal finances of President Ferdinand E. Marcos played a key role in the acquisition of hundreds of millions of dollars in property in the United States, according to Congressional and Filipino sources. The Asian and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has issued a subpoena for Rolando C. Gapud, a Manila banker, who, according to Congressional aides, Filipino business officials and business documents, also handles Mr. Marcos’s personal financial affairs. Mr. Gapud did not return a telephone message left with his secretary in Manila. President Marcos has not responded to questions presented to the Philippine embassy last year about his relationship with Mr. Gapud.
Congress would probably approve $30 million to $50 million in military aid for the Nicaraguan rebels if the aid request from the Administration “is done right,” a spokesman for the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today. The spokesman said the chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, believed the request would pass both houses of Congress if presented as part of a military and political package. He said the Administration would have to combine an argument about the Cuban and Soviet threat in the region with a demonstration of the commitment to democracy by the rebel leadership.
Salvadoran military officials said today that two army officers, linked by Washington to right-wing death squads and later sent into exile under United States pressure, have received promotions. The officials said that Major Ricardo Pozo had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Mario Denis Moran had been made a full colonel. Colonel Pozo, a former security force intelligence officer, was a military attaché in Paraguay. Colonel Moran had a similar post in the United States. Both were sent abroad, a form of punishment in the Salvadoran military, after the United States pressed for their removal as part of efforts to crack down on murders by death squads. Colonel Pozo and Colonel Moran were accused of providing information and support to rightist hit teams that killed thousands of Salvadorans. According to United States officials in San Salvador and in Washington, Colonel Pozo and Colonel Moran’s names appeared on a list of about 30 army officials and civilians that was brought to El Salvador in late 1983 by Vice President Bush.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, arriving in Santiago, Chile today on a tour of South America, was forced to leave the airport by police helicopter after dozens of pro-Government demonstrators blocked a highway. Some of the protesters wore life preservers and carried photographs of Mary Jo Kopechne, who died in the Senator’s 1969 automobile accident at Chappaquiddick. The demonstration was organized by the Independent Democratic Union, a party that supports the military Government.
Kenya announced a $50-million program aimed at reducing the East African nation’s nearly 4% annual population growth, reportedly the highest in the world. The program rejects abortion and forced sterilization but calls for increasing distribution of free contraceptives and introducing family-planning education in elementary and high schools. At the current rate, Kenya’s population could double, to about 36 million by the year 2000, according to the World Bank. The government says Kenyan women give birth to an average of 7.9 children each.
Liberia’s former finance minister has been arrested on charges of treason for an alleged role in an attempt to overthrow President Samuel K. Doe last November. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a leading member of the opposition Liberia Action Party, was arrested along with five others, Justice Minister Jenkins Scott said. The six will be tried next month. Doe was narrowly elected president last fall in a controversial election that the opposition said was fraudulent.
1986 U.S. budget cuts will produce “a minimum of disruption,” the Reagan Administration said as the specific reductions required by the new budget-balancing law were announced. But officials in the Administration and the head of the House Budget Committee said that if another, and larger, round of automatic cuts was required next year it would have disastrous consequences. A cut of more than $50 billion is possible in 1987 if Congress and the White House do not cut spending or raise revenue to reduce the deficit to $144 billion, the limit allowed by the law for that fiscal year. The comments came as the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office announced the specifications for the spending cuts, which are divided equally between the military and the nonmilitary budget. The Pentagon disclosed details of its cuts today, which were applied across the range of nearly 4,000 weapons, ammunition, spare parts and research programs. President Reagan chose to shelter military pay and research for a high-technology antimissile shield from the cuts. Military spending is reduced $5.85 billion in 1986. The nonmilitary cuts range from a $1,000 reduction in the expenses for the Secretary of the Senate to a $1 billion cut at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Consumers may notice many effects of the reductions required by the new budget-balancing law, budget officials and administrators said. Among other changes, the cutbacks will mean higher fees for government-guaranteed student loans, a possible shortened camping season at national parks and less frequent National Weather Service forecasts. Doctors will receive less for treating elderly Medicare patients. Nonprofit organizations may have to pay higher postage for fund-raising letters. College students will be charged more for government-guaranteed loans. These are just some of the ways consumers will feel the effects of automatic cuts in federal spending announced today as a result of the new budget-balancing law.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was “a great man who wrested justice from the heart of a great country,” President Reagan told a group of black schoolchildren on the occasion of Dr. King’s 57th birthday. Meanwhile, at ceremonies and protests, civil rights leaders criticized the Reagan Administration’s record on programs for minorities. “Our country is different because Martin Luther King Jr. made it better by the way he lived his life,” said Mr. Reagan, who also paid tribute to Dr. King’s nonviolent methods of attempting to win civil rights for the nation’s blacks. “It takes a lot of guts not to hit back when someone is hitting you — and he had that kind of guts,” said Mr. Reagan. Around the nation, political figures, civil rights activists, schoolchildren and family members honored Dr. King’s 57th birthday, including some who pointedly criticized Mr. Reagan in the process.
President Reagan participates in a signing ceremony for H.R. 1083, the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985.
The astronauts of the space shuttle Columbia, 25 days late going up, one day early coming down and unable to meet all their scientific goals, stowed equipment today to prepare for a landing tomorrow. The flight is set to end after four days in orbit with a landing at 8:28 AM at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission had been scheduled to last until Friday, but officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided to end it early to avoid chancy weather. The earlier landing will also help NASA keep to a tight schedule that calls for 15 shuttle launchings this year. That schedule has already been affected by seven delays that kept the Columbia on the ground past its original launching date of December 18. The landing will be the first by a shuttle in Florida since April, when the Discovery blew out two tires and damaged its brakes. The damage was attributed to the use of the braking system to steer the shuttle. A steering system has since been installed and was tested in landings at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The delays with the Columbia have already affected the next shuttle flight. That mission, Challenger STS-51-L, has been postponed at least another day, to January 25, officials announced today.
[Ed: And it will be bitterly cold at the Cape in late January…. Leading to tragedy.]
Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Secretary of the Treasury James A. Baker III said there was nothing improper in the Administration’s political ties to the Teamsters Union and its president, Jackie Presser. The links were assailed Tuesday by a presidential commission as impeding the battle against organized crime. “I think any member of the Administration would not want to do anything which would interfere with, or give any appearance of interfering with the proper enforcement of the laws,” Meese told a news conference. Baker, in an interview, said: “I don’t see why an Administration cannot have an arm’s-length relationship with one of the major labor unions.”
Requirements for supervising surgical interns at Veterans Administration hospitals are being met with “a lack of compliance throughout the VA system,” according to a government report prepared by the General Accounting Office. The report said the problem is especially severe in the days just before and after operations by residents-doctors who have just completed medical school. Senior surgeons failed to see the patients within 24 hours after surgery, the report said.
The Interior Department asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to issue a quick decision on whether the government may proceed with a disputed Alaskan oil lease sale blocked by a judge in Anchorage. The Interior Department told the appeals court that U.S. District Judge James von der Heydt erred in halting the sale on environmental grounds. The brief asked that the issue be decided in the government’s favor and sent back to Alaska so that bidders for the oil know where they stand.
Banks would keep more reserves on hand for risky loans than for safer loans under a proposal made by three Federal agencies, including the Federal Reserve Board. The plan reflects the central bank’s concern about mounting loans to developing nations, and for energy, agriculture and real estate purposes, as well as the accumulation of more than $100 billion of bank liabilities that do not appear on bank balance sheets.
A New Jersey surgeon testified that he told Bethesda Naval Hospital unequivocally that Dr. Donal Billig “should not be permitted to join the Navy, be in the Navy or operate in the Navy.” That was in March, 1983, said Dr. Cyril Arvanitis, when Billig had been performing heart surgery at Bethesda for about three months and questions were beginning to be raised about his competence. Billig is on trial at a court-martial in Washington on charges that he “unlawfully killed” five surgery patients through botched operations.
A federal judge in Tucson refused to let jurors in the sanctuary movement trial hear secret church tapes made by an informant, who underwent his final questioning as the only witness so far in the 11-week-old trial. Jesus Cruz, an admitted smuggler-for-hire paid $18,000 by the government, wore an electronic body bug when he infiltrated worship services and sanctuary movement meetings to gather evidence in 1984. Eleven Roman Catholic and Protestant clergy and lay workers from Arizona, Texas and Mexico have been on trial since October 22, accused of smuggling refugees into the United States.
State and Federal officials reached agreement with a California missile manufacturer today for the company to pay for cleaning up contaminated soil and water in the soil at its facility in Rancho Cordova, east of Sacramento. The Environmental Protection Agency said the settlement called for the company, the Aerojet General Corporation, and its subsidiary, the Cordova Chemical Company, to evaluate the effects of contamination from its plant on the nearby American River and to clean up or control the hazardous substances on the site and nearby.
Two Michigan inmates scheduled to be transferred from one maximum-security prison to another bolted from their guards today and took three employees and another inmate hostage at knifepoint, the authorities said. One hostage, Dennis Easley, a guard, was released unharmed after nearly 12 hours, officials said. Another guard, a kitchen supervisor and an inmate working in the kitchen were still held hostage. The hostages were not harmed and three negotiators were talking to the inmates with a walkie-talkie, according to a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. Demands for matches, cigarettes and the like were denied, said Jimmy Stegall, a prison official. The state police put a special weapons unit on alert and the Federal Aviation Administration banned flights over the area. The prison, 40 miles west of Detroit, was locked down 10 minutes after the hostages were taken, and inmates were fed in their cells with food sent in from Jackson, a prison spokesman said.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference ended a 16-week boycott of Winn-Dixie grocery stores after the chain announced it would no longer buy products from South Africa. The boycott of the Florida-based company in Georgia and seven other states in the South was “a victory of justice over injustice,” SCLC President Joseph Lowery said.
A court threw out a libel suit that a retired Army officer filed about a CBS broadcast of “60 Minutes.” In a unanimous decision, a Federal appeals court dismissed the $44 million suit brought by Lieutenant Colonel Anthony B. Herbert, who contended that he had been maliciously portrayed in a 1973 program about a dispute over his dismissal from the Army.
A state permit went into effect today allowing a company to release genetically engineered bacteria into the environment, but opponents are seeking to halt the experiment. The company, Advanced Genetic Sciences of Oakland, plans to spray a patch of strawberry plants at its test plot in Monterey County with Frostban, a laboratory-made derivative of a natural bacterium. But, prompted by complaints from residents, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors has called a hearing for January 27 to consider blocking the experiment. Lawyers for the Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington-based environmental group, said they would seek a Federal court injunction.
Smokeless tobacco endangers the health of users and increases the risk of mouth and throat cancer, a Government panel warned. Ten million Americans who use snuff and chewing tobacco, including three million people under the age of 21, also risk severe gum damage, according to the panel.
California’s Central Valley, for the first time, has a faster growing population than the state’s Pacific Coastline area. Although coastal cities still draw more people in absolute numbers, the movement towards the interior represents a fundamental shift in century-old growth patterns in the state.
Brutal cold and gusty winds numbed the Northeast, forcing thousands of homeless to seek shelter and stalling hundreds of cars while 100-mph winds and 35-below temperatures raked New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington with a wind-chill factor too cold to measure. Bitter cold plunged temperatures below zero over most of New York and New England with readings in the single digits and teens over the rest of the Northeast, forecasters said.
The last of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, Jim Crowley, died at a nursing home in Scranton, Pa., at the age of 83. The fabled backfield led Notre Dame to a 28-2 record over three years and an undefeated season in 1924. Crowley, a small, swift halfback, later coached the Seven Blocks of Granite at Fordham.
Montreal’s rookie goaltender Patrick Roy records his first of 66 career NHL shutouts, in the Canadiens’ 4-0 win against the Winnipeg Jets at the Forum.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1527.29 (+8.25)
Born:
Glover Quin, NFL safety and cornerback (Pro Bowl, 2014; Houston Texans, Detroit Lions), in McComb, Mississippi.
Fred Davis, NFL tight end (Washington Redskins), in Toledo, Ohio.
Jessy Schram, American actress (“Falling Skies”, “Chicago Med”), in Skokie, Illinois.
Died:
Jim Crowley, 83, American football player (Notre Dame; College Football Hall of Fame) and coach.
History Diaries 