President Reagan served notice to the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that he would not travel to Moscow for a 1987 summit meeting if he and Mr. Gorbachev could not work out a date for a meeting in Washington this year. The two leaders had agreed in Geneva last November to meet this year in Washington, and again next year in Moscow.
A Pentagon official said today that the Soviet Union had indicated it might be willing to consider additional verification measures for an unratified 1974 agreement that limits the size of underground nuclear tests. The official, Richard N. Perle, who is an Assistant Defense Secretary for International Security Policy, said the Soviet signals came through diplomatic channels before the House of Representatives called on the Administration on Feb. 26 to submit the 1974 treaty to the Senate for approval and to negotiate a comprehensive test ban with the Soviet Union. Mr. Perle, who has taken a tough stance on arms control, said the House action would undercut efforts to induce the Soviet Union to agree to the additional verification procedures. The House resolution, adopted by a vote of 268 to 148, was a symbolic defeat for the Administration, but not binding. One of the sponsors, Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the Administration has raised “phantom difficulties” on the verification issue. He said Mr. Perle was trying to blame Congress for “the Reagan Administration’s failure to negotiate an arms control agreement for the last six years.”
The French Defense Ministry announced today that a submarine had successfully fired a multiple-warhead missile over a distance of 6,000 kilometers (3,720 miles). The announcement surprised Western European defense experts, who had believed that the range of the missile, the M-4. was closer to 4,000 kilometers (2,480 miles). A Defense Ministry spokesman said the test this week marked the first time the M-4 missile had been fired 6,000 kilometers. The announcement and the disclosure of the greater range were seen by military experts as a signal that France intended to press ahead with modernization of its nuclear forces despite Soviet objections. As part of a plan to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2000, the Soviet Union has asked that Britain and France freeze their nuclear arsenals at present levels.
The Communist Party congress approved a resolution today calling for “truly revolutionary changes” in the Soviet economy. The resolution, the main policy statement of the 27th congress, endorsed almost word for word the demand for changes made in speeches by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, and Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov. Although all the decisions made beforehand by the Soviet leadership, the resolution will nevertheless serve as the touchstone for domestic and foreign policy for the next five years.
The Soviet Union allowed 84 Jews to emigrate in February, five more than the 79 who were allowed out in January, the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration said in Geneva. In 1985, 1,140 Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate, a monthly average of 95, the agency said. Only 21 of last month’s 84 arrivals at a special reception center in Vienna went straight to Israel, the agency said, probably because of economic problems in that country. A record 51,330 arrivals were registered in 1979, but the Kremlin changed its policy, and annual totals began falling sharply, dropping to a low of 922 in 1984.
Reagan Administration officials said they have no confirmation of a report that Vitaly S. Yurchenko, a Soviet defector who recanted and returned home last year, was executed in the Soviet Union. But Soviet Embassy spokesman Boris Malakhov called it “sheer nonsense.” National Public Radio quoted Administration sources as saying Yurchenko was executed by firing squad. A White House spokesman said the report is “an old story” put out about three weeks ago by European sources.
Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the United Nations, said yesterday that his affiliation with a German Army command responsible for the deportation of Greek Jews in World War II was being misrepresented to disrupt his campaign as an independent candidate for the presidency of Austria. “It is true that I served in the German Army command in the Balkans, but I never participated in any sort of cruelties,” he said in an interview on the CBS morning news. “All I did was to interpret between Italian and German commanders.” His appearance was one of several he made from his Vienna office in response to a report in The New York Times on Tuesday that he had served as an interpreter under General Alexander Lohr, head of a German command that fought Yugoslav partisans and deported Greek Jews from Salonika in 1942-43.
A Paris court decided today to press new charges against Klaus Barbie, the World War II head of the Gestapo in Lyons, but the move may delay his trial until 1987, judicial sources said. A section of the Appeals Court ruled that Mr. Barbie, who is already charged with killing Jews, will also be tried in connection with two cases involving the death of members of the French Resistance, the sources said. The decision ended several months of legal wrangling over Mr. Barbie’s case. He was to be tried last month on charges stemming from the deportation and death of more than 400 Jews, charges that fall into the category of “crimes against humanity,” for which there is no immunity. But other lawyers wanted the charges widened to include crimes against the Resistance.
An avalanche struck 31 members of a Norwegian Army ski patrol on NATO maneuvers in northern Norway today, and at least 11 were killed, military officials said. The police chief of Narvik, Ivar L. Schroen, who is in charge of the rescue operation, said that 6 solders were still missing tonight and that 14 others survived with injuries. Lieut. Col. Gunnar Mjell, information officer for the NATO winter exercise Anchor Express, said the injured soldiers were hospitalized in Narvik and Harstad, about 900 miles north of Oslo.
A high Vatican official, responding positively to efforts by a theological commission to reconcile the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, has indicated that the way may someday be cleared for Rome to accept the validity of the Anglican priesthood. A letter by the official, Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Vatican Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, was made public in London yesterday by members of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.
The Islamic Jihad (Holy War) extremist group in Lebanon said it has killed Michel Seurat, 37, one of four French nationals it claimed to hold. A statement delivered to a Western news agency in Beirut said the hostage was executed because of French actions toward Muslims and French policy toward the Middle East in general. Seurat, 37, a researcher at the French Center for Studies and Research of the Contemporary Middle East, was kidnaped last May 22 on the main highway leading to the Beirut airport. Islamic Jihad also says it is holding five American hostages.
The Tehran radio reported today that Iranian forces shelled the key Iraqi air base of Shuaiba on the southern front in the Persian Gulf war. It also said a major headquarters was hit with new heavy-artillery guns. In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraq reported new attacks on Iran and said King Hussein of Jordan had paid a surprise visit to the Iraqi capital to restate his support for Iraq in the war. Shuaiba, near the main southern Iraqi city of Basra, is 22 miles from the Iran-Iraq border. The Tehran radio said the Darihaimiyeh headquarters was 38 miles inside southern Iraq. “Deathly blows were dealt to the Iraqi forces and high-ranking were officers killed,” the radio said. The radio said artillery on the northern front destroyed an important garrison at Sitak, 170 miles northeast of Baghdad. It also said Iranian gun emplacements dug in on the west bank of Iraq’s Khawr abd Allah waterway, bordering Kuwait, sank an Iraqi gunboat and damaged another.
A Soviet co-pilot who hijacked an Aeroflot flight to China last December has been sentenced to eight years in prison, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced. However, East European sources said he is likely to be extradited to the Soviet Union soon. The flier, Shamil Gadji Ogly Alimuradov, was convicted by a court in Harbin of hijacking the Antonov 24 aircraft Dec. 19. The plane and the other 42 people aboard were quickly returned to the Soviet Union.
The founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines and three other men said to be key Communist figures were freed today, despite objections from the military. The step was part of a mass release of inmates who had been imprisoned by President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s Government for what the new administration regards as political crimes. The Communist Party’s founder, Jose Maria Sison, who is 47 years old, said after his release that he was prepared to support the “positive aspects” of the Government of President Corazon C. Aquino. But he declined to renounce the possibility of using armed force in a Communist revolution.
The United States is preparing to turn over to a Federal court the issue of what to do with the possessions brought to Hawaii last week by Ferdinand E. Marcos and his associates, according to Reagan Administration officials. Officials say they feel this legal strategy, known as an interpleader, will help distance the Administration from the dispute over the contents and ownership of the cargo, which was flown to Hawaii by two Air Force planes. It would also prevent both the Marcos group and the Philippine Government from gaining immediate access to the material, which is in the hands of the United States Customs Service at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. Meanwhile, Senator Paul Laxalt, Republican of Nevada, said that when Mr. Marcos ordered crates of Philippine currency assembled with his baggage and other possessions, Mr. Marcos thought they would be flown to his estate in the northern Philippines, not to the United States. According to Administration officials, the final decision of filing such an action in court has not been made, but President Reagan himself indicated today that he favored using the courts to resolve disputes about Mr. Marcos’s wealth.
Haiti’s new government freed about 250 prisoners, including five U.S. citizens. The release came a day after guards opened fire to quell a prison revolt in which convicts set fire to cells. “They had to let them go because there was going to be no prison left if they had waited longer,” said Kathy Stewart, one of the Americans released. She was arrested Dec. 10 for allegedly selling U.S. visas. A Haitian military official said most of the 250 were jailed for murder, rape, theft and drug offenses.
President Reagan again urged Congress to endorse his request for $100 million in assistance to Nicaraguan rebels. Mr. Reagan said the assistance was needed so that the United States would not have to send American troops there. “American troops have not been asked for and are not needed,” Mr. Reagan said in a speech to an umbrella group of leading Jewish organizations. “We must make sure they never are needed. We send money and material now so we’ll never have to send our own American boys.” Even as Mr. Reagan stepped up his campaign for the $100 million proposal, the White House suffered a setback when two House panels rejected the aid measure. White House aides concede that the aid package will face serious trouble when it reaches the floor, perhaps next week. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger told the House Armed Services Committee that failure to grant the President’s request for aid for the Nicaraguan guerrillas could lead to the introduction of American troops in Central America. Asked if American troops would be necessary to halt the spread of communism in the region, Mr. Weinberger replied: “Ultimately, that would indeed be the case.”
The main Nicaraguan rebel force is in its worst military condition since its formation in 1982, according to several Western diplomats and senior guerrilla officials. The officials, interviewed here in recent days, said the Honduran-based insurgents, known as contras, will need extensive training, new tactics and a possible change of commanders if they are ever again to pose a significant threat to the Sandinista Army. The guerrillas’ mass retreat has raised questions about their fighting ability even if they should receive renewed American military assistance. As many as 10,000 Honduran-based rebels, constituting most of the United States-backed guerrilla force, have been forced out of Nicaragua in recent months by supply shortages and improved Nicaraguan Army tactics and more sophisticated armaments, as well as the insurgents’ own ineffective strategy, diplomats and rebel officials say. Many of the those who commented on the rebels’ decline noted that it comes, paradoxically, when dissatisfaction with the Nicaraguan Government is growing at home and abroad. But the rebels have been unable to take advantage of this discontent to become a broad-based movement capable of challenging the Sandinistas.
Fresh fighting has erupted in Chad between Libyan-backed rebels and government forces after a two-week lull, the French Defense Ministry said in Paris. A French spokesman, quoting Chadian officials, said the fighting broke out at Kalait near the strategic government-held outpost of Oum Chalouba. France, the former colonial power in Chad, is aiding the government against the rebels.
Angola rejected a South African proposal to begin implementing a U.N. plan for the independence of Namibia provided that Cuban troops leave Angola. The official Angolan news agency, commenting on a speech by South African President Pieter W. Botha, said South Africa is just delaying Namibia’s independence “to continue exploiting its (mineral) riches and the Namibian people.” South Africa administers the territory, also known as South-West Africa, in defiance of U.N. resolutions.
At least 25,000 people, including diplomats from the United States and six other Western countries, crammed a crude and dusty sports stadium in this bleak township today for the funeral of 17 people killed in four days of rioting here and elsewhere around the country last month. The police say 22 people died in the violence, most of them shot by the security forces. But anti-apartheid activists here say that in addition to those buried today, 13 more are awaiting identification in a local morgue. Winnie Mandela, the activist wife of the jailed nationalist Nelson Mandela, who attended the funeral, said of the dead: “Even this price is not too great to pay for freedom. No bullets or armies can stop an idea whose time has come.” Her statement was read by a fellow activist, Frank Chikane.
The Senate Budget Committee began discussions on the 1987 budget, and Democrats and Republicans acknowledged new revenues will be needed to cut the deficit, despite President Reagan’s opposition. The deliberations were the first under the constraints of the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget law, which requires that the current deficit of more than $189 billion must be cut to $144 billion in the 1987 fiscal year. If the target is not met, automatic cuts are scheduled to kick in, though that part of the law faces a court challenge.
President Reagan hosts a breakfast meeting with members of the Godfrey Sperling Breakfast Group.
President Reagan participates in a meeting with Senator Hatch (R-Utah) to receive two bronze statues on behalf of the Senator’s constituents.
A U.S. Government task force on terrorism has recommended that potential injury to innocent civilians be considered in determining the need for American military intervention. The recommendation is contained in a report to be released Thursday by a task force headed by Vice President Bush. The report, which is the product of a study of several months, contains about two dozen recommendations, including the establishment of a consolidated intelligence center specializing in terrorism and increased efforts to penetrate terrorist groups. It urges the Congress to make the murder of American citizens abroad a Federal crime punishable by the death penalty, calls for a doubling to $1 million of the Federal award that can be given for assistance in bringing terrorists to justice, and recommends that the State Department conclude treaties to extradite terrorists.
The head of a Congressional subcommittee yesterday urged a close comparison of decisions involving the fatal launching of the space shuttle Challenger Jan. 28 with those in the postponement of another shuttle liftoff a year earlier. The previous launching was delayed because of freezing temperatures similar to those that are suspected of contributing to the Challenger explosion. The subcommittee chairman, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he wanted to compare the decision process that led space agency officials to delay a mission of the shuttle Discovery on January 23, 1985, but to permit the mission of the Challenger on January 28, 1986. The air temperature reached a low of was 30 degrees Fahrenheit the evening before the planned January 23, 1985, liftoff of the shuttle Discovery on a military mission, in contrast to 24 degrees the evening before the Challenger was launched January 28, 1986. The Discovery mission was postponed one day and was launched when the temperature was 66 degrees, compared with the Challenger’s liftoff in 38-degree weather on January 28. Testimony before the Presidential commission has disclosed that the Discovery launching resulted in the most damage found thus far to the seals between segments of the booster rockets. Some experts yesterday said they wondered whether the freezing temperatures the day before that launching could have contributed to the damage.
Congressional, contractor and agency sources yesterday said the Discovery launching was not postponed because of the O ring seals. They said it was postponed because water pipes on the launching pad froze and broke, and because there was a layer of ice on the Discovery’s huge external fuel tank. That ice could have broken off in flight and damaged delicate heat-resistant tiles needed to shield the crew when the spacecraft re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. A water line also froze and broke on the Challenger’s launching pad the night before its liftoff, but less ice was found on the Challenger’s external fuel tank, perhaps because the humidity was lower, the experts added. But Mr. Markey suggested that if the Discovery launching prompted concerns about the seals in low temperatures, those concerns should have increased regarding a launching in similar temperatures for Challenger.
Police officers must pay damages for clearly unreasonable arrests and searches even when they obtain judicial warrants beforehand, the Supreme Court ruled. The decision, a significant milestone in Fourth Amendment law, cleared the way for trial of a $4 million suit by a prominent couple from Narragansett, R.I., against a state police officer who obtained an arrest warrant charging them with a marijuana offense. The Court suggested that forcing “incompetent” police officers to pay damages to innocent people whose rights they violate was a better way to enforce the Fourth Amendment than suppressing evidence, which has “the side effect of hampering a criminal prosecution.” The Fourth Amendemnt prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures,” including arrests, and specifies that warrants must be supported by “probable cause.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson criticized proposed Democratic presidential nominating rules and announced that his Rainbow Coalition plans a national convention next month in Washington. The new rules, which the Democratic National Committee will vote on Saturday, lower from 20% to 15% the threshold of popular votes a presidential candidate needs to be awarded any convention delegates. But Jackson, saying that this is still too high and thus unfair to minority voters, threatened to take his complaint to court.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is asking Congress for $250 million to bail out its disaster relief fund, which recently helped flood victims in California and West Virginia. The fund is expected to post a $254-million operating deficit by September 30, the end of the current fiscal year, FEMA officials told a Senate appropriations subcommittee. “Our estimated new obligations… add up to an additional $464 million,” a FEMA official told the panel.
Costly nursing homes impoverish many Americans and force some elderly women to sue their spouses for support. Few couples can afford the $45,000 to $64,000 a year that nursing home care costs. In most cases, the savings and pensions that couples have accumulated are largely drained by Medicaid regulations, often leaving spouses at home with little more than $400 a month and food stamps to live on. That is the poverty level Medicaid generally sets for paying for nursing home care.
A call for widespread drug testing of government employees and contractors prompted new controversy. Several members of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime said they had not been shown the final version of the panel’s report on drug enforcement and were surprised and upset to read of the recommendations for wide testing.
The police chief of Hialeah, Florida, took early retirement amid an investigation by Dade County and FBI agents into corruption in the Miami suburb, a spokeswoman for the city said. Police Chief Cecil Seay, 59, four police officers and two members of the City Council are under investigation in connection with cocaine trafficking, murder plots and bribery plans that included public officials in Hialeah, according to the Miami Herald, and involve businessman Alberto San Pedro, described by the Herald as “the corrupter of Hialeah.”
A six-state study is planned to determine whether the downturn in the farm economy is resulting in more suicides or in more public attention to suicides, health officials say. This will be the first large-scale research program in the nation to see if the rate is actually climbing and, if so, what factors may be involved, said Paul Gunderson, statistics chief at the Minnesota Department of Health and one of the study’s directors. He said results could be available by early autumn. Minnesota, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin will take part in the study.
A Vietnam veteran drugged his girlfriend’s three children, then shot to death all four before torching their home in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and killing himself in an apparent murder-suicide pact foretold in a letter the couple mailed to a newspaper and a TV station, police said. The letter from Michael Dean, 43, and Caroline Hull, 32, suggested that Dean, a Vietnam Navy veteran, was angry because he thought the government had treated him unjustly. A poem ended with: “Please remember me, I’m the American vet — and widow and children.”
The United Steelworkers of America accepted a wage freeze and benefit increases Tuesday night to settle a 16-day strike against four of the largest can makers in the United States, then set out today to win a better contract with a strikebound Canadian company. The president of the largest of the United States companies said the three-year agreement reached in Chicago restrained labor costs in a period when can prices had been held in check by low-cost manufacturers. “We’ve been unable for the last two or three years to get any price increases,” said R. Phillip Silver, president of Continental Inc. of Stamford, Connecticut.
The U.S. Army has announced that it will provide bottled water to more than 5,000 students at schools near its Rocky Mountain Arsenal after municipal wells were found to be contaminated with a dangerous chemical. Senator Gary Hart, Democrat of Colorado, asked Army officials Friday to provide the bottled water for 11 Adams County schools after the Colorado Health Department advised residents to drink bottled water or boil their tap water because of trichloroethylene contamination in wells.
David T. McLaughlin, the president of Dartmouth College, said tonight that 12 students suspended by a disciplinary committee for destroying shanties built to protest college investments in South Africa would be given a new hearing. The students, 10 of whom work for The Dartmouth Review, a conservative newspaper, were suspended Feb. 11 after they attacked four shanties built on the campus last November by divestment advocates. Mr. McLaughlin said he decided on a new hearing, to be held next week, on the recommendation of “special counsel” and because of “certain procedural aspects” of the first hearing.
Four weeks after a Federal jury awarded $2.5 million to Jan Kemp, a former instructor at the University of Georgia, the case continues to make waves in the state. In a lawsuit that has left state officials and Georgia boosters badly bruised, Mrs. Kemp successfully argued that she had been dismissed by two university administrators in retaliation for speaking out against special favors afforded the school’s student athletes. Last week the State Attorney General, Michael Bowers, decided to ask for a new trial in the case, despite arguments among some here that evidence in the lawsuit was so damning to the university that the state ought not to reopen it. But Mr. Bowers said there was little choice in the matter. “We cannot let a $2.5 million verdict go unchallenged,” he said, calling the award “shockingly excessive.”
Moderate physical exercise during adult life can significantly increase life expectancy, according to a continuing study of nearly 17,000 Harvard alumni. The newest analysis showed that men who took part in activities like walking, stair-climbing and sports that used 2,000 calories or more a week had death rates one-quarter to one-third lower than those who were least active.
An adult novel by Horatio Alger Jr., a sharp departure from his rags-to-riches stories, will be published by the Shoe String Press for the first time this summer, more than a century after Alger wrote it. Unlike his 103 juvenile books, this novel has a hero and heroine who refuse to equate wealth with happiness.
The Great Lakes continue to rise after surging to record levels last year. All along the 1,400-mile Michigan shoreline basements have been flooded and beaches have been narrowed. Some homeowners have abandoned their cellars and hired contractors to seal them off. Others have put washers, dryers and furnaces on cinder blocks so they will not be damaged by water in the basement.
David R. Gergen, a former assistant to President Reagan and now senior managing editor of U.S. News & World Report, was named today as editor of the weekly newsmagazine. Mr. Gergen, 43 years old, will fill the post vacated in January by Shelby Coffey when he resigned after nine months to become editor of The Dallas Times Herald. Mr. Gergen, who was the President’s director of communications from early 1984 to 1985, went to work at the magazine a year ago as a columnist, was named managing editor last August and took over as senior managing editor early this year. He was graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School.
“Today” tabloid launched (Britain’s 1st national color newspaper); it folded in 1995.
The Braves trade catcher Rick Cerone and a pair of minor leaguers to the Brewers for catcher Ted Simmons.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1686.66 (+0.24)
Born:
Corey Brewer, NBA small forward, shooting guard, and power forward (NBA Champions-Mavericks, 2011; Minnesota Timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Oklahoma City Thunder, Philadelphia 76ers, Sacramento Kings), in Portland, Tennessee.
Cedric Jackson, NBA point guard (Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs, Washington Wizards), in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
History Diaries 