A senior United States Government official said today that there was “to this day no change” in the Soviet Union’s opposition to research for President Reagan’s space-based missile defense plan. United States officials had recently shown interest in statements by Soviet leaders that repeated their fundamental opposition to the plan but made no mention of research. Previously, Soviet leaders had said progress in arms control was possible only if the United States renounced all aspects of the space-defense system, known formally as the Strategic Defense Initiative and popularly as the “Star Wars” plan. But the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, announcing new arms proposals on January 15, the eve of the resumption of the Geneva talks, did not specifically mention a ban on research, saying his plan was possible if both superpowers “mutually renounce the development, testing and deployment of space strike weapons.” Five days later, Georgi M. Korniyenko, the Soviet First Deputy Foreign Minister, said at a news conference that the Soviet Union sought not a ban on “basic research,” but a ban on research that was “goal-oriented or directed specifically toward designing or developing a weapons system.”
A senior Central Intelligence Agency official has told Congress that the Soviet radar under construction north of Krasnoyarsk is a “potentially quite vulnerable” installation. As a result, the official said, some intelligence analysts believe the radar may have limited suitability for any future Soviet antiballistic missile defense. The assessment was provided by Robert M. Gates, the Deputy Director of Intelligence, in a written response to a question submitted to the agency from Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin. Mr. Gates is also the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which prepares the government’s classified assessments of Soviet strategic force developments.
A 17-year-old Soviet youth allowed to immigrate to the United States was reunited with his mother today after more than six years of separation, a United States Embassy spokesman said. The youth, Mikhail Stukalin, came by train from Moscow and met his mother, Margarita, at the United States Consulate, the spokesman said. Mrs. Stukalin, who moved to the United States six and a half years ago, lives in Brighton, New York, a suburb of Rochester. Stukalin was among a group of 10 Soviet citizens whose permission to emigrate was announced before the Geneva summit meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in November.
Britain’s Trade Minister resigned in the furor over the Government’s handling of the future of small, bankrupt helicopter company. Leon Brittan, the Minister of Trade and Industry and the Cabinet member closest to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the controversy, departed despite pleas from Mrs. Thatcher to stay. He was the second Cabinet casualty in the affair over Westland, the helicopter company that has become the object of rival rescue bids from two international consortiums. His resignation came swiftly after backbench members in the House of Commons of the governing Conservatives, concerned about damage to the party, caucused late Thursday night to demand that their leadership move decisively to end the controversy by persuading Mrs. Thatcher to part with him. Mr. Brittan, whose rapid rise in the Cabinet was exceeded only by the speed of his fall, was installed three years ago in the senior post of Home Secretary when he was only 43 years old. Fifteen days ago his main antagonist in the controversy, Michael Heseltine, resigned as Defense Secretary by marching out of the Cabinet room at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s official residence. Danger to Thatcher
Mr. Brittan’s departure left Mrs. Thatcher as the only major actor in the affair who is still in the government. Thus, although the future of the helicopter company is now universally judged to be a marginal issue, any questions about the government’s handling of the matter will have to be fielded by her. The danger that she could be isolated within her party if the controversy drags on was widely thought to be the main reason that she clung to Mr. Brittan. Yet, ironically, it was a statement by Mrs. Thatcher in Parliament on Thursday about a leaked letter that finally undercut his position. The Prime Minister held her Cabinet colleague responsible for the release to the press of sections of a letter from the Solicitor General to Mr. Heseltine while he was still Defense Secretary. She acknowledged that the disclosure, which was calculated to embarrass Mr. Heseltine, had been cleared by her own office. Nevertheless, she maintained that she was not told that Mr. Brittan had authorized the disclosure. Three days after the disclosure Mr. Heseltine resigned. Four days after that Mrs. Thatcher ordered an inquiry into the source of the leak. Officials in her office tried Thursday night to persuade reporters that the Prime Minister, whose mastery of detail has been a hallmark of her administration, learned of Mr. Brittan’s role only nine days after the inquiry began.
Parliamentary by-elections in Ulster indicated that Northern Ireland has overwhelmingly rejected a British-Irish agreement giving Dublin a say in the province’s affairs, Protestant unionist leaders said. A vote tally showed unionists had lost one of the 15 seats they had resigned to force what they view as a referendum on the agreement. Protestant unionist leaders said the vote showed an overwhelming rejection of the British-Irish agreement giving the Irish Republic a say in the province’s affairs. “The vast majority has spoken today through the ballot box,” James Molyneaux, a leader of the Official Unionist Party, said today. If Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher does not listen, he said, “there would be others who would do things we would not approve of.”
Workers at Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in London went on strike today over the introduction of new technology, halting production of Saturday editions of two of the papers. Leaders of the two main print unions, the National Graphical Association and the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades, said work had already stopped on The Times and The Sun.
Israel’s Prime Minister has received assurances that King Hussein of Jordan has decided to move ahead toward talks with Israel, even if the Palestine Liberation Organization and Syria continues to withhold their approval. “What I understood,” the Prime Minister said, “is that the King has decided to go on, no matter what sort of replies he may have in the future.” The Israeli leader said at a news conference here that the assurances were conveyed by Richard W. Murphy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, who met here this week in an intense round of talks with Mr. Peres and the Jordanian leader. King Hussein left London soon before Mr. Peres arrived on an official visit.
Only nine days after he was ousted as commander of the Christian militia and sent out of the country, Elie Hobeika has returned to Lebanon to lead a Syrian-backed campaign against his Christian opponent, President Amin Gemayel. Mr. Hobeika, 29 years old, met today with another Christian foe of Mr. Gemayel, former President Suleiman Franjieh, 72, in Zgharta in northern Lebanon. Local radio stations said the two discussed the possibility of joining Moslem activists in an effort to force Mr. Gemayel to resign the presidency.
U.S. Navy carrier jets began operations north of Libya, and the State Department said the weeklong maneuvers were intended to demonstrate the “United States resolve to continue to operate in international waters and airspace.” The statement left open the possibility that the Navy jets from the carriers Coral Sea and Saratoga might be ordered into airspace over the Gulf of Sidra, thereby risking a clash with Libyan forces. Libya claims the entire gulf as its territorial waters, extending some 100 miles from the gulf’s southern shore. But the United States and virtually all Western nations recognize only a 12-mile offshore belt as Libyan waters.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi said today that he had placed Libya’s armed forces on “full alert” in response to United States air and naval maneuvers off the coast of Libya. The Libyan leader called the maneuvers, announced Thursday by the Navy, “gunboat diplomacy” and an “aggressive provocation.” Colonel Qaddafi told three Western reporters in separate interviews today that he had ordered Libyan aircraft out over the disputed Gulf of Sidra to “defend Libyan territorial waters.” But he repeatedly declined to elaborate on what, if any, specific measures he would take to counter the presence of the United States Sixth Fleet in waters Libya has claimed as its own. Libya regards the entire gulf as its territorial waters, but the United States has said it recognizes only a 12-mile territorial limit.
South Yemen Premier Haydar Bakr al-Attas becomes interim-president.
President Reagan participates in a photo opportunity with Afghan children.
Vietnamese heavy guns pounded a Thai border post, killing three marines and causing an artillery battle with a Thai warship offshore, military sources said today. A Thai Navy spokesman said the barrage Thursday was aimed at a Thai marine outpost in Haad Lek, a village at the southern tip of the Thai-Cambodian border. The Vietnamese fire came from a hill overlooking Haad Lek, inside Cambodian territory. “This appears to be a deliberate provocation by the Vietnamese,” he said. “It does not look like a spillover of fighting inside Cambodia.” He said a Thai warship in the Gulf of Thailand responded by shelling the Vietnamese artillery base. Military sources at Aranyaprathet, 135 miles east of Bangkok, said the warship fired more than 100 shells and the Vietnamese more than 70 shells.
The United States is close to concluding a sale to China of radar and other equipment to modernize China’s fighter planes, Reagan Administration officials said today. If this deal, being negotiated in Peking by Chinese and American officials, goes ahead, it will be the largest sale of American military equipment to China since it was authorized to buy such hardware in 1984. Officials said it could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Senator Richard G. Lugar will lead a delegation of American observers to the presidential election in the Philippines, Reagan Administration officials said. Senate sources said Mr. Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, was asked to head the delegation by Secretary of State George P. Shultz after a White House meeting between Mr. Shultz and President Reagan. Mr. Shultz told Mr. Lugar that the delegation had been formally requested by President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos defended his war record today in the face of a report that the United States Army had dismissed his assertion that he led a guerrilla unit in World War II against the Japanese. “I consider it a compliment that they — the opposition and the Western press — find all my exploits, which I consider an ordinary part of my war experience, as unusual, extraordinary and therefore unbelievable,” Mr. Marcos said, according to the Government television station. The opposition candidate, Corazon C. Aquino, said the report on Mr. Marcos’s description of his wartime activities was “proof of his deceptions.” “I imagine the Filipino people will now be thoroughly convinced that Mr. Marcos has to go,” she said as she continued campaigning for the Feb. 7 election.
Detailed contingency plans have been drawn up to move Navy and Air Force units from the Philippines to Guam, Okinawa and other Pacific locations if the United States is forced to leave its Philippine bases, according to Reagan Administration officials. The officials said the plans, which were drafted by the United States Pacific Command in Honolulu within the last year in response to the deteriorating political situation in the Philippines, would take three to five years to carry out. They would cost “several billion” dollars and would greatly complicate deployment of United States ships and aircraft in the event of a crisis in the Indian Ocean. The officials said, however, that the Pentagon had decided not to earmark any money in its new five-year budget plan to begin preparing facilities at alternative sites. They said the decision was based on the expectation that, regardless of the outcome of the Feb. 7 election in the Philippines, the United States would remain at its Philippine bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay until at least 1992 and probably thereafter.
A Miskito Indian spokesman said today that a group of Indian leaders from the United States and Canada, on a secret trip inside Nicaragua with a Miskito leader, Brooklyn Rivera, had been encircled by Nicaraguan Government troops. The Mikito spokesman, Armstrong Wiggins, said the purpose of the trip was to familiarize the foreign Indian leaders with conditions in the Miskito area and the attitudes of the people. A Nicaraguan official in Washington said he had no information from his Government about the presence of Mr. Rivera’s group but added that if it had entered the country illegally and was traveling with armed men, it would “have to suffer the consequences.” Although the Miskito spokesman said the delegation had not gone into Nicaragua to engage in combat, the Nicaraguan official, Manuel Cordero, deputy chief of the Nicaraguan Embassy, pointed out that one of the American Indians on the trip, Russell Means, had declared in Costa Rica on Nov. 10 that he hoped to recruit 90 to 100 “warriors from North America” to fight the Sandinistas.
Nigeria, hurt by plunging oil prices and a $20 billion foreign debt, replaced its Oil and Finance Ministers today in a Cabinet shuffle. Oil Minister Tamunoemi David-West changed jobs with Mines and Power Minister Rilwanu Lukman, and Finance Minister Kalu I. Kalu changed posts with National Planning Minister Chu S. P. Okongwu.
Rebel troops descended today on Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and fighting spread throughout the city, according to Western diplomats and others in the East African country. Other sources said it appeared that the rebels were about to seize control of Kampala, as hundreds of government soldiers reportedly fled the city and fighting broke out around the Parliament building. The development came a month after a long-awaited peace accord, an attempt to end years of violence by disarming the warring factions, was signed after months of difficult negotiations. Some witnesses, reached by telephone, said government troops were indiscriminately killing civilians, in the worst violence in Uganda since representatives of the rebel National Resistance Army and the military government signed the peace agreement in Nairobi.
Winnie Mandela sharply criticized the Reagan Administration today, accusing Washington of supporting “the racist white regime in South Africa” and of ignoring the country’s black leaders. The anti-apartheid campaigner also denounced a plan within the Administration to seek military aid for Jonas Savimbi, who is leading a guerrilla war against the Marxist Government of Angola. Mrs. Mandela said United States aid to Mr. Savimbi would associate Washington with South Africa’s attacks on neighboring black-ruled nations. Mrs. Mandela, the wife of the jailed black nationalist Nelson Mandela, was speaking at a hotel near Johannesburg where she received the Robert Kennedy Memorial Human Rights Award, a prize awarded by a family foundation set up in his name. The Reagan Administration “refuses any assistance to the true representatives of the people in this country, the African National Congress,” she said. “We can only conclude from this that the American Government is determined at all costs to maintain and support the racist white regime in South Africa.”
Responding to new calls for a tax increase from some Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, President Reagan rejected the idea afresh today. After a meeting with Mr. Reagan this morning at the White House, Bob Packwood, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Mr. Reagan was “adamant about any kind of sales tax, value-added tax, consumption tax -call it what you want — no.” The Oregon Republican, whose committee will start hearings on a House-passed tax bill next week, said Mr. Reagan had ruled out raising new revenue as part of the final Congressional version of that bill or in a separate bill to reduce the deficit.
President Reagan’s popularity is “remarkably” high as the 1986 election year begins, Mr. Reagan’s pollster told the Republican National Committee today, adding that this boded well for Republican candidates this fall. In a survey earlier this month, 74 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the President was handling his job, the pollster, Richard Wirthlin, told the committee at its annual winter meeting here. Such popularity could add “two or three percentage points” to Republicans on the ballot this fall, Mr. Wirthlin said. Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., the Republican national chairman, sounded similarly optimistic, although he added a note of wariness as he cited the recent election in Virginia last November, when Democrats swept the top state offices. “The Democrats will try to ‘out-Republican’ us in 1986,” he said, by increasingly stressing Republican themes and issues.
President Reagan participates in a meeting to discuss tax reform legislation his Chief of Staff and Senator Packwood (R-Oregon).
Vice President Bush, intensifying his political courtship of Republican conservatives and religious fundamentalists, said today that “America is in crying need of the moral vision” he said the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his followers had brought to the political process. “Let me say, go for it,” Mr. Bush declared in urging a gathering of state leaders of Mr. Falwell’s Liberty Federation to become more politically active. The federation is a political organization formed recently by the founder of Moral Majority to mobilize conservatives who support his views on domestic and foreign issues. Moral Majority has become a subsidiary of the federation. Mr. Bush, who already has Mr. Falwell’s endorsement for President, urged the leaders of the federation not to let critics who have denounced their movement as “moral McCarthyism” drive them out of the political process.
The Farmers Home Administration said today that it was delaying and scaling down a program it announced in December to send foreclosure notices to tens of thousands of farmers who owe the Government a total of $6 billion. Vance L. Clark, the agency’s administrator, said the original foreclosure notices had been rewritten and redesigned “in order to reduce some of the fear this thing has caused.” The rewritten notices are to be mailed to 27,000 farmers who are delinquent in their payments to the agency by three years or more. Initially the notices were scheduled to be mailed to an estimated 80,000 farmers who were behind in their payments by more than one year and $100, In addition, Mr. Clark said the agency had prepared a second, “more polite” letter for 38,000 other borrowers whose financial troubles were less severe. “This is a much softer letter that shouldn’t scare anybody,” Mr. Clark said.
Citing the new budget-balancing law, the Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman Jr., has frozen the hiring of civilian workers, Navy officials said today. The action was the most severe taken by any of the services since officials said last week that the Pentagon budget would have to be cut 4.9 percent to comply with the law. More limited hiring freezes have been imposed over the past week by the European Command in the Army and Systems Command in the Air Force.
A Congresswoman was charged by a Los Angeles grand jury with offering a key opponent $100,000 to drop out of the Republican Senate primary. Representative Bobbi Fiedler, a California Republican who is seeking the Senate seat held by Alan Cranston, the three-term Democratic incumbent, and a political aide were accused in the case. The indictments resulted from an investigation reportedly based on information provided by Mrs. Fiedler’s potential opponent, State Senator Ed Davis, a former Los Angeles police chief.
The first camera close-ups of Uranus, the solar system’s third largest planet, were taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft 2 billion miles from Earth. Voyager 2’s closest encounter with the planet today was planned five years ago and occurred slightly more than a minute behind the original schedule. The spacecraft, which has been on its journey since 1977, transmitted a stream of photographs and data from which scientists expect to make major discoveries. Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here reported that Voyager came within 50,679 miles of the bluish-green clouds of Uranus at 12:59 PM, Eastern standard time, slightly more than a minute behind the flight schedule that was calculated five years and nearly a billion miles ago. Voyager came even closer to the moon Miranda, passing within 17,400 miles of its icy surface. The 1,800-pound Voyager raced by the sunny side of the planet at 45,000 miles an hour. The craft, operating automatically by computerized controls, was rolling steadily to keep the television cameras on target and to prevent smearing of the images. More than 200 pictures were taken over the hours of the close encounter.
The flight of the first private citizen into space, scheduled to begin Sunday, has filled the Kennedy Space Center with crowds of teachers and tourists in what promises to be a public relations bonanza for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Christa McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school teacher from New Hampshire who was chosen in a space agency competition among more than 11,000 teachers to be one of the space shuttle Challenger’s seven crew members, is set to begin her historic voyage Sunday at 9:36 AM, equipment and weather permitting. Space agency officials said today that there was a 30 percent chance of rain Sunday morning.
President Reagan’s nominee to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is Lando W. Zech Jr., a retired vice admiral who commanded the Navy’s first nuclear-powered submarine, the White House announced today. He will succeed Nunzio J. Palladino, who is retiring, on July 1. Mr. Zech, 62 years old, was named to the commission in 1984, replacing Victor Gilinsky, the panel’s last Democratic appointee. Mr. Zech has voted with Mr. Palladino as part of a four-man majority on most issues. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses the construction and operation of commercial nuclear generating stations and medical and research reactors. It also enforces Federal safety standards for them.
Striking meatcutters and representatives of Geo. A. Hormel and Company met with a fact-finder today in St. Paul to discuss a contract proposed by a mediator in an effort to end the five-month strike. In Austin, the union halted demonstrations at the company’s plant, which had been the scene of angry confrontations and arrests earlier in the week. The discussions in St. Paul were being conducted by members of the executive board of Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Hormel executives and the fact-finder, Arnold Zack of Boston, who was brought in at the request of Gov. Rudy Perpich.
The Diocese of Providence ruled that the director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island had excommunicated herself from the Roman Catholic Church by acting as an accomplice to women seeking abortions. Several religious experts said the ruling against someone who has not directly participated in abortions was highly unusual. “I have not heard of that being done elsewhere,” said the Rev. James H. Provost, executive coordinator at the Canon Law Society, a professional association of church lawyers. The diocese made the determination in the case of Mary Ann Sorrentino, who has been director of the agency for nine years. Mrs. Sorrentino said that her agency operated a clinic that performed a thousand abortions a year.
Governor Mark White of Texas today opened his campaign for a second term, telling supporters, “We have kept the vision, courage and commitment we began with, but we still have more to do.” Unlike four years ago, when his election campaign began with news conferences around the state, the 45-year-old Democrat confined his schedule today to an appearance at Houston’s Briargrove Elementary School, where his mother, Sarah Elizabeth Wells White, taught for 36 years. Challenging the Governor in the Democratic primary on May 3 will be Andrew C. Briscoe 3d of Dallas, Les Chambers of Lancaster, Texas, and A. Don Crowder, a Dallas lawyer.
Showing the scars of burns on her arms, Ramona Johnson Africa repeatedly asked Mayor W. Wilson Goode today why he had not vetoed a police plan to bomb the fortified house where she lived with the radical group Move. Miss Africa, the only adult in the house who is known to have survived the bombing last May 13, is being tried on charges stemming from the confrontation. “Were you concerned about the people in the house?” she asked the Mayor, whom she had subpoenaed at her trial in the Court of Common Pleas. “I was concerned about all the people, the people in the house, the police officers, the firefighters, all the people,” he responded. “We in fact took every precaution to make sure the people were not hurt.” The bomb, intended to give the police access to the house after a daylong siege, ignited a can of gasoline on the roof. Eleven Move members died and 61 houses were destroyed.
A 5-year-old Kentucky boy who saw his picture on a television show about missing children sat in his weeping mother’s lap in a courtroom reunion today, but a judge delayed a decision on whether she can keep her son. “Do you want to go home to mommy?” the boy’s mother, Jennifer Studer, asked her son Benjamin Lee Studer. The boy, clutching the toy truck she gave him, nodded yes. But Judge Charles Nice of Family Court said the decision was complicated by questionable divorce proceedings, and he postponed the case until next Wednesday to obtain full records from Kentucky. The boy’s father, Benjamin Studer, is charged in Kentucky with kidnapping him last year from their home in Covington. He was jailed Wednesday night after the child pointed himself out to a stunned baby sitter watching the NBC show “Missing.”
A speech by Eleanor Smeal, the president of the National Organization for Women, was canceled by the student government at Catholic University because of her views on abortion, officials said today. Mrs. Smeal, who supports the right of a woman to choose an abortion, received an invitation from three groups of law students today, and she accepted.
43rd Golden Globes: “Out of Africa”, Jon Voight, & Whoopi Goldberg win.
The NHL New York Islanders, Mike Bossy scores his 1,000th point.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1529.93 (+18.69)
Born:
Mischa Barton, English-born American actress (“The O.C.”), in Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom.
Raviv Ullman, Israeli-American actor (Phil Diffy — “Phil of the Future”), in Eilat, Israel.
Sean McVay, American football coach (Super Bowl 57, Los Angeles Rams, 2022), in Dayton, Ohio.
Tyler Flowers, MLB catcher (Chicago White Sox, Atlanta Braves), in Roswell, Georgia.
Franklin Morales, Venezuelan MLB pitcher (Colorado Rockies, Boston Red Sox, Kansas City Royals, Toronto Blue Jays), in San Juan de los Morros, Venezuela.
Andy Dirks, MLB outfielder (Detroit Tigers), in Hutchinson, Kansas.
Jack Hillen, NHL defenseman (New York Islanders, Nashville Predators, Washington Capitals, Carolina Hurricanes), in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Died:
L. Ron Hubbard, 74, American sci-fi writer (“Battlefield Earth”; “Dianetics”) and founder of Church of Scientology.
Gordon MacRae, 64, American singer and actor (“Oklahoma!”, “Carousel”), of pneumonia.
History Diaries 