Senior Administration officials said today that time was running out on holding the next Soviet-American summit meeting this summer and that it was possible the meeting might not occur before late this year or early next. The inability to set a date for the summit meeting, which by agreement is to be in the United States, has become a point of contention between Moscow and Washington. Setting a date has become linked in Soviet statements to progress on arms control, such as a ban on all nuclear tests, much to the irritation of American officials. The Soviet Union has also said the American decision to cut the size of Soviet missions to the United Nations would harm the prospects for a summit meeting. The White House announced today that President Reagan had sent a letter to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, outlining a more specific proposal for verifying the yield of nuclear tests. The goal is to make it possible to ratify treaties signed in the 1970’s limiting nuclear tests to under 150 kilotons, or the force of 150,000 tons of TNT. The letter was apparently an effort to respond to criticism in Congress and in some foreign capitals that the Administration was unresponsive to Soviet proposals for banning underground nuclear tests. But the American proposal does not deal with proposals for a complete test ban, which has been rejected by the Administration on the ground that testing is needed to develop new weapons and assure the reliability of existing weapons.
In his letter to the Soviet leader, Mr. Reagan said Soviet scientists could visit the nuclear test site in Nevada in the third week of April, when the United States plans to conduct a nuclear test. Mr. Reagan also proposed that American and Soviet officials meet to discuss the ratification of two 1970’s treaties. Mr. Reagan has made such proposals before. But he said that his latest proposal was more specific and contained a discussion of technology that is used to determine the yield of nuclear tests. He said Soviet scientists could use a system, called Corrtex, involving an electrical cable that is inserted into a test hole to measure the yield of a nuclear explosion. Government experts said today that it was not known if the Soviet Union had similar technology, but that Corrtex was not new. They said similar technology was discussed with the Soviet Union in the 1976 negotiations for the treaty on peaceful nuclear explosions, which limits explosions used for construction.
In Moscow today, a Deputy Foreign Minister, Viktor G. Komplektov, held a news conference to call on the United States to begin test-ban talks in Washington, Moscow or Geneva. He said that the offer was “a new element in the Soviet position” and that the talks could start by next month. Mr. Komplektov said the Soviet representative in such negotiations would be Andronik M. Petrosyants, chairman of the State Committee on the Utilization of Atomic Energy.
The Soviet Union today ordered the expulsion of an American diplomat who it said had been caught meeting with a Soviet citizen to gain intelligence information. The official press agency Tass reported that the American, Michael Sellers, a second secretary in the political section of the United States Embassy, was detained Monday “in flagrante delicto as he was having a clandestine meeting with a Soviet citizen recruited by U.S. intelligence.” “Another espionage operation by U.S. secret services against the Soviet Union was cut short,” Tass said. The United States Embassy confirmed the expulsion order, but, following its policy in such cases, declined to comment further.
Foreign leaders and delegations converged on Stockholm, Sweden today for the funeral of Olof Palme, the assassinated Prime Minister. The funeral promises to provide an occasion for high-level diplomatic contacts on subjects ranging from Soviet-American relations to southern Africa. It also will be a severe test for the police and security forces, who have been strained by their frustrating two-week search for suspects and a motive in the shooting of Mr. Palme. On Saturday afternoon, when Mr. Palme is to be buried in a churchyard that he walked past minutes before he was shot, 1,800 policemen and other security agents will be on duty in the center of the capital to protect the leaders of 125 foreign delegations.
A radical Muslim group today gave France a “last chance” to meet its demands for the release of French hostages, and it released a videotape of three captives begging for an end to their ordeal. The statement from the extremist Muslim organization, Islamic Holy War, denied that the group had met with a French intermediary seeking the hostages’ release. The intermediary, Dr. Razah Raad, reported earlier that he had made “important steps” in talks with the kidnappers.
Israeli Herut Party officials scrambled to patch together their fragmenting right-wing party today after the collapse Thursday of its national convention. But the bitterness among the key leaders in the Herut Party — Yitzhak Shamir, David Levy and Ariel Sharon — appeared to be as intense as ever, and there was no indication that they were prepared to talk with one another, let alone resolve their differences. With the Herut Party in a shambles, and Mr. Levy and Mr. Sharon having effectively undermined the authority of Mr. Shamir, the party leader and Foreign Minister, pressure seemed to be mounting today on Prime Minister Shimon Peres to exploit the situation for his Labor Party.
The United States will hold its third naval exercise this year off the coast of Libya this weekend, but the exercise will be more limited than previous ones, Pentagon sources said today. One source described the planned maneuvers, which will involve a single aircraft carrier instead of two, as “a small tuneup” for what could be a three-carrier exercise later this month. Other sources said no decision had been made about a much larger exercise. The Defense Department and the Navy, following their normal practice, refused to discuss details of future exercises.
A team of experts appointed by the United Nations reported today that Iraq had used chemical weapons “on many occasions” against Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf war. Mustard gas was the agent most commonly used by the Iraqis, but nerve gas was also used “on some occasions,” according to the report, written by the experts and published today under the name of Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. It was the third United Nations investigation of chemical warfare in the five-and-a-half-year-old Iran-Iraq war and the first time that Iraq was named for using chemical weapons. The team was made up of four chemical warfare experts, Dr. Gustav Andersson, a senior research chemist at the National Defense Research Institue in Sweden; Dr. Manuel Dominguez, an army colonel and professor of preventive medicine in Spain; Dr. Peter Dunn, a scientist at the Materials Laboratory in Australia’s Defense Department, and Colonel Ulrich Imobersteg, Chief of Chemical Weapons Defense of the Swiss Army. They saw 700 casualties in Tehran and Ahwaz hospitals and found burns and respiratory injuries caused by chemical weapons, the report said. They also said mustard gas was dropped in Iraqi bombing attacks on the the southern Iranian city of Abadan, where they found traces of the gas in bomb craters, and on Iranian military positions in the Fao Peninsula in southern Iraq.
The United States warned Iran today that if it carried the war against Iraq into other Persian Gulf nations, such a move would be regarded as “a major threat to U.S. interests.” The warning came as State Department officials said that Iran, perhaps encouraged by its ability to maintain its recently gained foothold in Iraq despite Iraqi counterattacks, had been privately and publicly threatening other Gulf countries with attacks unless they stopped aiding Iraq. Bernard Kalb, the State Department spokesman, said, “The Iranians have made no secret of their campaign to intimidate moderate Gulf Arab states.” He noted that Iranian spokesmen had recently warned the “moderate states” such as Kuwait to curtail support for Iraq or face military attack. “The United States has consistently urged the earliest possible end to the Iran-Iraq war in a manner that will preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of both Iran and Iraq,” Mr. Kalb said. “We have stressed that expansion of the conflict elsewhere in the Gulf region would be a major threat to U.S. interests.” He declined to say what the United States might do specifically, but in the past, American officials have said the United States would do whatever was necessary to protect friendly nations like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait if they were unable to defend themselves against Iran.
A group of major Protestant churches accused the military-backed South Korean Government today of “utter disregard” for basic rights and declared its support for constitutional changes demanded by the political opposition. The National Council of Churches in Korea, an alliance of six major Protestant denominations, said in a statement by the Rev. Kim Jee Giel, its chairman, that true democracy had been delayed more than 40 years, and that “we cannot wait any longer.” The council says it represents about half of the 8 million Protestants in this primarily Buddhist country of about 40 million. The opposition New Korea Democratic Party began a petition drive last month for direct presidential elections and other constitutional changes. On Sunday, South Korea’s Roman Catholic leader, Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou Hwan, said he supported direct elections. Witnesses said about 1,500 students at Yonsei University clashed with about 600 police officers for two hours today. Another melee was reported on the campus of Seoul National University involving about 300 students and more than 1,000 police.
The Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war, does not expect success from any peace talks that may be held with the new government, a senior Communist official said today. The official, presenting the party’s position for the first time, said Communist leaders were willing to discuss a cease-fire with the Government of President Corazon C. Aquino. But in an uncompromising stand, he stressed that a successful outcome would depend upon a willingness by Mrs. Aquino to radically alter her government and make sweeping changes. He said any chance for reconciliation depended on whether she could “reform” the Philippine military and dismantle the “fascist structure” of local politicians and private armies created by Ferdinand E. Marcos when he was President.
White House officials said today that with the possibility of a House defeat of President Reagan’s aid request for Nicaraguan insurgents, Mr. Reagan was now prepared to compromise on how and when the assistance from the United States is provided. A senior White House aide said that despite public disclaimers of any interest in compromise by Mr. Reagan and other Administration officials, White House legislative strategists were actively exploring several options that have been suggested on Capitol Hill, including one presented by Senator Bob Dole, the majority leader. The aide said that Mr. Reagan remained firm on the need for $100 million in aid, $70 million of which is for military assistance, but that he was prepared to accept a delay in distribution of the money. Some legislators have suggested linking a 60- to 75-day delay in distributing the aid to the start of talks between the rebels and the Nicaraguan Government.
In announcing a foreign policy framework today that commits the United States to “democratic revolution” around the world, President Reagan offered a rationale for his efforts to obtain aid from Congress for rebels in Nicaragua. But officials acknowledged that Mr. Reagan’s expression of support for democracy might create a new problem in dealing with anti-Communist nations that support United States policy but persist in human rights abuses. The President’s message to Congress declared that the United States opposed all dictatorships, whether of the right or the left. In essence, he said his Administration had been applauded for its successful efforts to remove rightist dictators in Haiti and the Philippines but scorned by some of the same people for opposing the leftist Government in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua said a spy ring had been working to infiltrate the Interior Ministry under orders from the Central Intelligence Agency. Three suspects, all Nicaraguans, were arrested by the security police. Commander Lenin Cerna, chief of the security police, also named four American diplomats who he said were involved in the C.I.A. operation. Two were posted at the United States Embassy in Managua. An embassy spokesman said he knew of no American diplomats who worked for the C.I.A.
About 2,000 Ecuadorean soldiers, backed by tanks and artillery, today recaptured a Quito air base held by the former armed forces Chief of Staff, who had called for the overthrow of the President. A Government spokesman said the rebel leader, Frank Vargas Pazos, had been captured. The Quito radio said army and police forces battled the rebels for 90 minutes at midday and retook Mariscal Sucre air base, which Mr. Vargas seized Thursday night. A Government spokesman, Patricio Quevedo, said in a statement broadcast over all radio stations, which were under Government control as part of a state of emergency, that four people were killed and nine were wounded.
The Chilean Foreign Minister said today that the country’s “enemies” wanted to see the Government act “desperate and precipitously” in the face of the United States-sponsored resolution criticizing its human rights record. “We are not going to do this,” the Foreign Minister, Jaime del Valle, told reporters this morning, before hearing that the resolution had been adopted.
An American official, declaring that this is a “year of testing,” urged South Africa today to move quickly to dismantle apartheid. The official, Frank Wisner, Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, told reporters in Cape Town that the United States hoped to see quick movement on changes promised by President P. W. Botha. “We want to see a post-apartheid democratic order evolve and evolve as quickly as possible,” Mr. Wisner said. “This is a year of testing, a year in which we all hope that South Africa will be able to evolve from its present unhappy circumstances into a time where black leaders and white leaders can negotiate this country’s future.” Mr. Wisner is on a four-nation African tour seeking support for a new initiative on independence for South-West Africa, the territory, also known as Namibia, that Pretoria controls in defiance of United Nations resolutions.
Elated scientists at the European Space Agency said today that the spinning Giotto craft that streaked past the heart of Halley’s comet early this morning revealed the comet’s mysterious nucleus to be extremely dark, rough and irregular, and bigger than had been thought. “There’s no question that the true color of the nucleus is black, absolutely black, blacker than coal, almost like velvet,” Horst Keller, an agency scientist, told a crammed news conference called to give preliminary results from the Giotto probe. “It’s very dark, the darkest dark you can imagine.” “Since the nucleus is so dark, it must be warm,” said Mr. Keller, who said the comet appeared to be covered with a black crust. “The ice has to come from deeper in,” he added.
The use of obsolete computer memory technology aboard the space shuttle Challenger may prove the key to recovering a trove of new information about the last seconds of the flight, experts said yesterday. Although officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration refused to comment on the recovery of the Challenger’s five on-board computers, the makers of the ship’s five flight recorders said yesterday that the devices had been retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean. Data beamed to earth stopped abruptly at 73.631 seconds into the flight, but experts say it was possible that the computer system kept collecting data until parts of its circuitry or power supply were destroyed by the explosion that killed seven astronauts January 28. If they are correct, the memory systems built into the special computers by the International Business Machines Corporation may contain the last data collected by the hundreds of sensors, fuel and pressure indicators and control instruments aboard the shuttle.
Spokesmen for the companies that made the tape recorders recovered this week from the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger said today that it was “conceivable that there is retrievable data” on the tapes, even though the recorders had been submerged in sea water for more than six weeks. The tapes could have recorded the last conversations among Challenger crew members and clues to the cause of the disaster in which seven astronauts died. “We were told that all five of our recorders were recovered,” Bill Prichard, a spokesman for the manufacturer, Odetics Inc. of Anaheim, Calif., said. The recorders were in the crew compartment of the Challenger, which National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said they found a week ago. Still, the officials have repeatedly refused to comment on the recovery of the crew cabin or its contents, which could have included the remains of the five men and two women aboard, the flight-deck computers that controlled all aspects of the flight and the flight recorders.
The Producer Price Index dropped by 1.6 percent in February, the biggest one-month decline since the key inflation gauge was established in 1947. The Labor Department said falling oil and gasoline prices helped drive it down. The decline, which was considerably more than had been expected, pulled the index slightly below its February 1985 level as well. This meant that prices paid by wholesalers and distributors actually fell, in the aggregate, over a full year. The news set off another rally in the stock market that gave Wall Street its best and busiest week in history.
President Reagan participates in a National Security Planning Group meeting.
President Reagan participates in an interview with Guillermo Descalzi, correspondent for the Spanish International Network (SIN).
Contending that the Reagan Administration is losing its credibility on national security and military policy, two leading Congressional Democrats predicted today that their party was poised to regain the political advantage on this key issue. “We are going to wrap the ‘window of vulnerability’ around their necks in ’88,” said one, Representative Les Aspin of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, alluding to a phrase Mr. Reagan used in his 1980 campaign to assail President Carter’s military program. Mr. Aspin and Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia led a panel discussion on military policy before an audience of Texas Democrats, many of whom are partial to the giant military contractors in this area. The forum was sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, an independent group of elected officials who are trying to give a more centrist cast to their party’s image and policies.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger has decided not to disclose the cost of the radar-eluding Stealth bomber despite Congressional complaints that more information is needed to determine the fate of the multibillion-dollar project. The secrecy has heightened the controversy over the Stealth program and is part of a larger problem of balancing the need for national security secrets against the need to provide Congress with the necessary information for public debate on military programs. Some Pentagon officials have argued that disclosing the cost of the Stealth program would not damage national security, and military experts privy to information given Congress say the Pentagon has estimated the cost at $36.6 billion in 1981 dollars. These sources said the current Stealth program, officially called the Advanced Technology Bomber, calls for six prototypes of the plane and a fleet of 132 production models. The 360,000-pound bomber would use new technology aimed at making it difficult for enemy radar to detect, but not impossible.
A division of the General Dynamics Corporation that makes cruise missiles said today that the Defense Department had lifted the division’s unsatisfactory security rating. The unsatisfactory rating was imposed in January on General Dynamics’s Convair Division in San Diego, primarily because the company could not find more than 20 classified documents. Since then Convair has not been eligible to receive new Government contracts, but with the lifting of the unsatisfactory rating it will again be able to do so.
The U.S. Government lists safety violations charged to Eastern Airlines in an action that could result in $9.5 million in fines by the Federal Aviation Administration. Eastern said most of the charges were unfounded and said it had been denied its right to question specific allegations. The agency also made public a letter in which Eastern outlined steps taken to overhaul its maintenance program and its commitment to complete such corrective action. The agency had threatened to ground the airline unless such a letter was received by noon yesterday.
After government witnesses testified for three months about the smuggling of Central Americans into the United States, defense attorneys for 11 church workers rested their case today without questioning a single defense witness. The first scheduled defense witness, an immigration investigator who directed a nine-month undercover inquiry into the movement to provide sanctuary to Central American refugees, was about to take the oath when the defense lawyers rose one by one and told Federal District Judge Earl H. Carroll that they were resting their case. The judge dismissed the jury until next week. The defendants, who include two Roman Catholic priests, a nun, a Presbyterian minister and church layworkers, are charged with conspiracy to smuggle Central Americans into the United States. The church workers contend that religious and humanitarian motives compel them to provide sanctuary to refugees fleeing persecution.
Leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union today ordered meatpackers in Austin, Minnesota, to abandon their bitter seven-month strike against Geo. A. Hormel & Company, but the leader of the strike vowed to continue the walkout. “The strike is called off as of now,” William Wynn, president of the parent union, said at a news conference here. Mr. Wynn also ordered an end to the strike benefits of $40 a week the parent union has been paying the Austin workers, a move labor experts say could be fatal to the strike. Mr. Wynn said the parent union would make “post-strike contributions” to members who ended their picketing at Austin and other Hormel plants and halted what he called an “unauthorized boycott” of Hormel products. Al Zack, a spokesman for the union, said the post-strike payments would also be $40 a week.
The union for Philadelphia’s bus, trolley and subway drivers agreed tonight to extend until 6 PM Sunday a deadline for a mass transit strike that threatened to strand 400,000 city commuters. A state mediator, Edward Feehan, announced the agreement less than four hours before a midnight strike deadline set earlier by Local 234 of the Transport Workers Union against the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Mr. Feehan said the parties would negotiate through the weekend. The union represents 5,000 workers. A strike would not affect the authority’s suburban commuter rail lines.
The first profit-sharing checks of the employee-owned Weirton Steel Corporation were distributed to workers in Weirton, West Virginia. The company was saved in 1984 from possible extinction when employees accepted cuts in pay and benefits of 20 percent and established Weirton as the largest employee-owned company in the United States.
The corporation responsible for financing and organizing the “Great Peace March,” which was to take thousands of people on a 3,325-mile march for nuclear disarmament, disbanded today. But hundreds of marchers are still determined to continue to Washington as a grass-roots movement, some of the organization’s officials said. People Reaching Out for Peace, or PRO-Peace, out of money and resources, shut its office doors this afternoon as several hundred men, women and children it had organized for the march remained stranded after four days in the chilly Mojave Desert 120 miles from Los Angeles.
The Federal Government yesterday ordered an emergency group to inspect dairy herds in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, where thousands of gallons of milk have been dumped because cattle may have eaten feed tainted with a banned pesticide. Stores in those states, as well as in Texas, Louisiana and Kansas, have removed from their shelves milk that may have come from cattle believed to have ingested feed contamminated with the pesticide heptachlor. Nearly 100 dairy farms have been quarantined in Arkansas and Missouri because cows were found to have ingested feed contaminated with the pesticide heptachlor.
After a three-year investigation into corruption and drug smuggling, agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation today arrested a former State Police Commissioner, a state judge, a former gubernatorial candidate, a county executive, a sheriff and seven others. As part of the investigation a Virginia State Police agent, Houston McNeal, spent 15 months posing as a drug smuggler, said Joel Carlson, an F.B.I. spokesman. Ten indictments containing 62 counts were unsealed after the F.B.I. arrested 12 suspects. Four others named in the indictment remained at large.
Two planes crashed eight hours apart in dense fog that blanketed the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, killing six people and injuring six others, the authorities said today. A Simmons Airlines plane crashed late Thursday on a flight from Detroit as it tried to land at the Alpena airport in northeastern Michigan. An official for the regional airline said two Sault Ste. Marie residents and the flight crew’s first officer were killed, and six others injured. Early today, a single-engine plane crashed near Frankfort in northwestern Michigan, killing a Frankfort doctor, his wife and another man.
About 75 people were treated at Detroit hospitals after they were overcome by fumes, which officials said may have come from an industrial boiler cleaner being used in the newly renovated courthouse. None of those hurt were reported to be in serious condition.
A report on acid rain finds conclusive evidence that the burning of coal and other fossil fuel causes environmental damage. The finding was in a report on acid rain that the academy called “the most comprehensive to date.” The report, which uses records stretching as far back as the 1880’s, demonstrates that the burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels in the Eastern part of the country caused lower visibility, acidified lakes, dead fish and other adverse environmental effects. The study found the clearest instance of this cause-and-effect relationship in acidified lakes of the Adirondack Mountains of New York State.
Federal prosecutors began yesterday to reorganize their search for the inside information on municipal corruption in New York that they had been pressuring Donald R. Manes to give them in the days before he killed himself. The prosecutors had threatened to indict Mr. Manes on extortion charges within days, according to officials familiar with the case, but his lawyer urged delay, saying Mr. Manes’s mental state was so fragile he might not be able to stand trial. A senior law-enforcement official said the suicide of Mr. Manes on Thursday night would force Federal prosecutors to “regroup,” shifting their inquiries to new targets who might not otherwise have received their full attention until the investigation of Mr. Manes had been resolved. One immediate effect of Mr. Manes’s death, officials said, will be to shift much of the spotlight in the city’s sprawling corruption inquiries to the Bronx Democratic chairman, Stanley M. Friedman, who now becomes the most prominent public figure caught up in the investigations.
The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 39.03 points, to a record 1,792.74. This brought the blue-chip indicator’s rise for the week to 92.91 points, exceeding the five-day record of 87.46 points in the week ended August 3, 1984. Trading also set a record, with the New York Stock Exchange’s volume at 880.8 million shares, against the old record of 827.6 million for the week ended last December 13.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1792.74 (+39.03)
Born:
Este Haim, American singer-songwriter, musician (HAIM) and film and television score composer (“The White Lotus”; “Anyone But You”), in Los Angeles, California.
Jamie Bell, British actor (“Billy Elliot”), in Billingham, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Edith Atwater, 74, American actress (Phyllis-“Love on a Rooftop”).
History Diaries 