Talks on reducing the number of NATO and Warsaw Pact troops in Europe ended today without progress, the White House announced. Hopes for making progress in the talks, which have been going on for twelve years, had been lifted last December when the United States, responding to concerns expressed by Western European nations, significantly modified its negotiating position. Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, also appeared to signal that progress could be made in the negotiations in the area of verification in his wide-ranging proposal January 15 on arms control issues. But Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said today that the Soviet Union had failed to respond “constructively” to a proposal by the United States and its allies that was presented last December. Kenneth L. Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, described the latest round in 12 years of negotiations between the Atlantic alliance and Warsaw Pact countries as “a real downer.”
Jacques Chirac is Prime Minister of France. Jacques Chirac, the leader of the neo-Gaullist party, formally assumed the post of Prime Minister today and formed a new, conservative Government. On Tuesday, President Francois Mitterrand, the Socialist leader, invited Mr. Chirac to become Prime Minister after a right-of-center coalition narrowly won parliamentary elections held Sunday. The new Government formed by Mr. Chirac signaled a major shift in the political life of France, back to the conservatives who had governed uninterruptedly for 23 years before elections in 1981 swept a Socialist administration into power. Cabinet Members Named Mr. Chirac’s formal acceptance today was accompanied by his presentation to Mr. Mitterrand of a list of the new Cabinet members. It marked the formal beginning of what the French call “cohabitation,” a power-sharing arrangement between a leftist President and a rightist Prime Minister that had never been tried in this country before.
Two people were killed and 28 wounded, 10 seriously, when a bomb exploded in a crowded shopping arcade at rush hour on the Champs-Elysees. The explosion at the Point Show arcade occurred just as Jacques Chirac began addressing the nation as Prime Minister. No one took responsibility for the explosion and there was no indication that it was linked to the announcement of a new, conservative Government, although some officials saw it as a warning to the Government.
The Bundestag, West Germany’s lower house of Parliament, passed a controversial law restricting the power of trade unions. The bill, passed roughly along party lines, 265 to 210, will change the traditional system under which all workers affected by strikes, in whatever part of the country, have been automatically eligible for unemployment benefits. In the future, those in the industry affected by the strike will not be entitled to unemployment payments.
Imprisoned financier Michele Sindona, who was once known as “God’s Banker” because of his ties with the Vatican, was reported in a deep coma and near death, two days after being sentenced to a life term for ordering a murder. Sindona, 65, was taken ill as he ate breakfast at a prison in Voghera, Italy. He was reported to have been in a coma on arrival at a nearby hospital, where tests indicated no brain activity. Hospital officials said that antidotes were administered on suspicion that his coma may have been caused by poison, possibly cyanide.
A 228 km/h gust of wind strikes Cairngorm (UK record).
State Department officials said today that they hoped to insure American base rights in Turkey with an exchange of letters committing the Administration to seeking as much military aid for Turkey as possible. The officials said Turkey was upset at the failure of the United States to live up to promises in an executive agreement of 1980 and had instead proposed a formal treaty under which Turkey would be guaranteed as much aid as the largest American aid recipient gets. The Turks want a treaty to insure Senate endorsement of high aid levels, since Congress has been cutting back past aid requests. The biggest aid recipient is Israel, with more than $3 billion a year. Turkey now gets about $1 billion.
President Reagan will meet Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar at the White House on Friday to discuss the world organization’s financial crisis, the United Nations announced today. A United Nations spokesman said the visit was suggested in January by Vernon A. Walters, the American delegate, when United Nations officials told him that legislation recently passed by Congress would cause serious financial problems for the United Nations and cause the United States to violate its treaty obligations.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak vowed to bring to justice the gunmen who killed an Israeli Embassy staff member and wounded three others. A group calling itself “Egypt’s Revolution” claimed responsibility for the ambush attack. The slain Israeli was identified as Etti Tal-Or, 24, an embassy employee and wife of an attaché. Israeli and Egyptian officials said the attack will not stop them from seeking better relations and peace in the Mideast.
A second day of fierce fighting erupted today between Lebanon’s rival Muslim and Christian factions in Beirut and the eastern mountains, and the police said 7 people were killed and 21 wounded. Meanwhile Katyusha rockets struck the headquarters of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army inside Israel’s so-called security zone in southern Lebanon. In Beirut, mortar shells struck populated areas on both sides of the Green Line that divides the city into Christian and Muslim sectors. There was no explanation for the sudden flare-up of violence.
The United States strongly condemned Iraq today for what Washington says is Baghdad’s use of chemical weapons in its six-year-old war with Iran, saying it marked a “serious violation of international law.” Ambassador Donald Lowitz told the 40-nation Geneva Conference on Disarmament that a new United Nations report finding chemical weapons were used in the Iran-Iraq war was consistent with American findings. “My country deplores Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in this conflict,” Mr. Lowitz said.
Indian police arrested about 200 militant Sikhs who were moving to blockade the Punjab state assembly in Chandigarh. The arrest of the Sikhs, all members of the United Akali Dal organization, came amid the worst Sikh-Hindu clashes to hit the state since Surjit Singh Barnala became chief minister six months ago. A senior police official said the state government has asked for up to 10,000 paramilitary police reinforcements after clashes that have left four towns under curfew and six blockaded by crowds of Sikhs.
A total of $1.1 million in interest is missing from a United States foreign aid account that former President Ferdinand E. Marcos had tapped during the recent election campaign, a Government auditor reported today. “The withdrawal represents just one of the hundreds of ways the Marcoses handled public funds illegally and unethically,” said Edward Sanchez, the auditor investigating the use of the United States Economic Support Fund, which contains part of the American aid package received by the Philippines. “We expect to reveal other instances but we haven’t yet compiled the documentation,” he said. The aid is a partial payment for American use of military bases in the Philippines. Government investigators suspect the missing money may have been channeled into the Marcos election campaign.
Reagan Administration officials said tonight that the United States had received word from Panama that it had turned down a request for asylum for former President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines. The officials declined to comment when asked whether they considered the Panamanian decision final, saying only that the United States would continue its efforts to help Mr. Marcos find a home in various countries in which he has expressed an interest. “The dialogue with these countries is continuing,” an official said. Link to Manhattan Buildings In New York today, the Philippine Government made public a document that it said clearly linked Mr. Marcos to ownership of four buildings in Manhattan thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
A document links Ferdinand Marcos to ownership of four commercial buildings in Manhattan said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the new Philippine Government. It made the document public as part of a deposition submitted to a Federal District judge in a Manhattan courtroom.
Justice Minister Gerard Gourgue, one of the two civilian members of Haiti’s six-member governing council, resigned today. A transportation strike, meanwhile, virtually paralyzed the capital, and hundreds of students picketed the National Palace. No reason was given in the brief announcement of Mr. Gourgue’s resignation, broadcast over the national television as the students held the first formal anti-Government protest since President Jean-Claude Duvalier fled to France on February 7. Mr. Gourgue, who was president of the independent Haitian Human Rights League during the Duvalier Government, had pressed for the extradition and prosecution of the ousted President and other members of the fallen Government.
President Reagan spends most of the day calling Members of both Houses of Congress to discuss the passage of the Contra-aid bill.
President Reagan stays in the Oval Office study to watch the Contra debate and vote in the House of Representatives on television.
The House rejected the request by President Reagan to send $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan guerrillas. The vote was 222 to 210, with 16 Republicans joining 206 Democrats in rebuffing Mr. Reagan in what he called a major test of his Presidency. Forty-six Democrats and 164 Republicans supported Mr. Reagan, who was calling wavering lawmakers right up until the vote and asking for their backing. Compromise Is Expected Democrats and Republicans alike said that the outcome reflected a deep-seated confusion and uneasiness in the country over the President’s policy toward Central America. Mr. Reagan, Congressional leaders agreed, failed to convince enough House members that he has seriously tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement in the region.
White House officials said today that, with the House rejection of President Reagan’s $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan rebels, they were placing their hopes on the Senate. At the same time, they conceded that some serious tactical mistakes had been made in the battle in the House. Meanwhile, some House Democrats said they had been able to defeat Mr. Reagan’s proposal because he had failed to articulate his policy clearly and show a firm enough commitment to negotiating a peaceful settlement in the region. In addition, they said, the tactics of some Administration officials who had questioned the loyalty and patriotism of Mr. Reagan’s opponents backfired, generating resentment and hardening opposition to the aid package. Mr. Reagan, in a statement designed to project the Administration as looking ahead immediately after the House vote, vowed to continue efforts to obtain the money. The President said the Administration would now shift its efforts to the Senate, where an intense selling campaign is to begin Friday.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said tonight that he expected continued hostility from the United States despite today’s House vote rejecting renewed aid to anti-Government rebels. “The President of the United States will maintain his policy of trying to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution,” Mr. Ortega said in an interview broadcast on the evening news. “The struggle will continue between the terrorist policy of the American President and the policy of peace, which is supported by the people of the United States and of Latin America,” he said.
General Rodolfo Lobos Zamora, a former Guatemalan army chief accused by civil rights groups of being responsible for the disappearance of hundreds of people during the regime of General Oscar Mejia Victores, has been named by the new civilian government as ambassador to Panama. Foreign Ministry sources said it means he will not now be liable to any proceedings arising out of efforts by a private group to bring him to trial for alleged human rights abuses. The group has charged that Lobos Zamora was involved in a secret network of jails in which opponents of the former military regime were detained or “disappeared.”
Chilean police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of women and youths who blocked streets in Santiago, the capital, demanding an end to military rule. Police arrested 97 people. Opposition leaders and students joined the demonstration called by 15 feminist organizations. Youths shouted “Democracy now!” and women handed out mock ballots asking people to vote for democracy or dictatorship.
South African police said they shot and killed two blacks who had commandeered a white motorist’s car in a white suburb of Johannesburg where black youths have stolen at least 52 cars in the past month. Another youth was shot fatally in the black township of Soweto when he pointed what turned out to be a toy pistol as a mob attacked a riot patrol with gasoline bombs, officers said.
Launching of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 3 rocket, aborted seconds before liftoff Wednesday, has been rescheduled for March 28, Charles Bigot, director general of the Arianespace project, said today. He told reporters at the space center here that three major problems arising from the cancelled launching would probably be resolved within five days and that a new final countdown for the mission could start a week from today.
Over the objections of the Democratic leadership, the House of Representatives this evening approved a bill to reduce the Federal budget deficit by $18 billion over three years. The vote of 230 to 154 sends the measure to President Reagan, who the White House has said will sign it. The action ends a dispute among the House, the Senate and the White House that blocked a much larger deficit-reducing package at the end of last year. The plan extends the 16-cent-a-pack cigarette tax permanently and makes major savings in Medicare by limiting increases in doctors’ reimbursements. It makes cuts in rural housing loans and requires new state and local employees to pay the payroll tax for Medicare coverage.
The White House is sitting out this year’s budget battle in the Senate, at least for now, in a high-risk strategy that seems to ignore the political impact the new budget balancing law might have on Capitol Hill. The law might drive the Senate and the House, without Administration participation, to write a bipartisan budget that defies President Reagan’s priorities of a growing military budget and no tax increases. Already the new law, which was supported strongly by Mr. Reagan, has helped build bipartisan coalitions over competing priorities. And despite the question before the Supreme Court about the law’s automatic process for cutting spending, its $144 billion ceiling for the 1987 deficit has become a hard-and-fast goal of budget writers in the Senate and the House.
The space agency and the Navy have decided to add two more surface ships and one more manned submersible vehicle to step up the search for wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger. James R. Thompson Jr., a high-ranking official of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, says the Presidential commission looking into the disaster has asked the agency to complete its investigation, including salvage work, by April 18. The commission, which is to reconvene public hearings Friday in Washington, must report to President Reagan by June 3. The addition of the ocean research ship Edwin Link and the Navy auxiliary submarine rescue ship Kittiwake next week will bring to 12 the surface ships seeking to recover key pieces of wreckage from the spacecraft, which exploded over the ocean January 28, killing the seven astronauts aboard.
The Reagan Administration today agreed to a three-month delay in a plan to cut Federal funds for research at the nation’s universities. The Administration also agreed to consult with universities about the best way to reduce their administrative costs related to federally financed research projects. But in testimony before a House subcommittee examining the situation, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joseph R. Wright Jr., said that savings in the amount the Administration had proposed would have to be achieved. Mr. Wright said that universities would have to hold the percentage of research dollars that they spend on administrative overhead to 26 percent of their federally financed research budgets. Mr. Wright said that if a savings of $100 million could not be gained next year by cutting administrative costs to that level, the money would have to come from research funds.
President Reagan will not address Harvard University’s 350th anniversary celebration in September because of a heavy fall schedule, the university announced today. In January 1985 the university’s president, Derek Bok, invited Mr. Reagan to address the four-day celebration. When the invitation was disclosed four months later, some faculty members and students objected, citing reports that the university would confer an honorary degree on the President. President Roosevelt addressed a 300th anniversary celebration in 1936 and was not awarded an honorary degree. Mr. Reagan’s decision was disclosed in a statement by Mr. Bok. “We are disappointed,” Mr. Bok said, “but we certainly understand his reasons for declining in view of the heavy demands on his time.”
Negotiators in Philadelphia reached a tentative agreement to end a five-day strike by public transit workers that had shut down buses, trolleys and subways for 440,000 daily riders. Negotiators for striking public transit workers and the transportation authority reached a tentative contract agreement today to end a five-day strike after more than 20 hours of negotiations. “It’s settled,” said Roger Tauss, president of Local 234 of the Transport Workers Union, who predicted that the 5,200 drivers, mechanics and ticket takers on the city’s buses, trolleys and subways would be happy with the contract. “I’m happy,” added Lewis Gould, board chairman of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.
House Democrats called for an overhaul of the presidential primary system to reduce the undue influence voters in early primaries have on the choice of presidential candidates. Rep. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican whose state traditionally holds the nation’s first primary, promptly branded the call for changes as “another ill-conceived effort on the part of Congress to wrest control of the election process from the individual states.” But Rep. Al Swift (D-Washington) insisted the early primaries “distort the nominating process.”
House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Massachusetts) postponed debate until April 9 on rival measures to change the 1968 Gun Control Act. Debate was to have started Thursday and continued today, to be immediately followed by final votes. Chris Matthews, O’Neill’s press spokesman, said the decision was made because “there was too much of a load on the calendar this week.”
Examiners have found tampering in three SmithKline Beckman drug products, the corporation announced, although officials stressed no poison has been found. The company urged consumers to stop using Contac cold capsules, the allergy medicine Teldrin and the appetite suppressant Dietac that had been bought since Saturday. Officials said the company had received threats that poison would be placed in its products, and a Federal investigator said some capsules of the three products had been tainted with corn starch.
As Illinois Democrats assessed the damage of two ultraconservative unknowns’ upset victories in the party’s statewide primary Tuesday, Adlai E. Stevenson 3d, the party’s nominee for Governor, asserted today that he would never run on any ticket with them. “There is no way ever I could or would run on a ticket with supporters of Lyndon LaRouche,” the former Senator said in an interview here. In the Illinois primary Tuesday, Mr. Stevenson easily won renomination as the Democratic candidate to oppose Gov. James R. Thompson, a Republican seeking his fourth term. But instead of Mr. Stevenson’s handpicked candidate for Lieutenant Governor, George Sangmeister, Democratic voters chose Mark J. Fairchild, a supporter of Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. Democrats also rejected Mr. Stevenson’s selection for Secretary of State, Aurelia Pucinski, daughter of the former Congressman Roman C. Pucinski, and instead chose Janice Hart, another backer of the far-right ideologue.
After fleeing Texas upon her conviction on felony charges, Rukmini Sukarno Kline, a daughter of Sukarno, the Indonesian leader from the early postwar years until 1966, has surrendered to the authorities and is in jail in Houston. Mrs. Kline turned herself in Wednesday before a state district judge in Houston and said she fled after the conviction because she panicked and became sick. She is being held in $500,000 bail.
The International Business Machines Corporation asked a judge today to drop trespassing charges against 14 college students who staged a sit-in at the company’s office to protest its business dealings with South Africa. Judge Francis J. Darigan of State District Court refused to consider the request immediately, but he accepted pleas of not guilty from the students on charges of trespassing, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a $500 fine. Among the students who were arraigned and released on their own recognizance was Amy Carter, the daughter of former President Jimmy Carter. Miss Carter is an 18-year-old freshman at Brown University. The judge continued the case to April 10 and told attorneys for I.B.M. and the students to file briefs on the dismissal request. Judge Darigan also criticized the company for asking the police to halt Wednesday’s sit-in and then asking for the dismissal a day later. Leonard DiIuro, an I.B.M. branch manager, said the company wanted the dismissal “for business reasons.” He declined to elaborate.
Union members striking three General Electric Co. plants at Lynn, Massachusetts, voted overwhelmingly to end a monthlong walkout by 7,400 employees that had halted work on more than $1 billion in military contracts. “It’s a just and fair settlement,” said Paul Sullivan, a negotiator for Local 201 of the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Technical, Salaried and Machine Workers. Many of the striking employees were expected to return to work today. Sullivan estimated that 90% of the approximately 4,000 union members at a brief outdoor rally approved the pact in a show of hands.
Thousands of commuters are riding school buses to work or squeezing their cars onto jammed highways because of a labor dispute that has stopped commuter rail service north of Boston. Five lines running out of North Station here have been shut for more than a week, although railroad officials hope to resume some service on two of them Friday. The dispute, which began over job security for members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees on the Maine Central Railroad, is the latest in a series of blows to a commuter rail operation that has become increasingly popular in Boston. Many commuters consider the trains more reliable than the highways, where traffic has been up sharply in recent years, but lines that run from North Station have been cut twice in 14 months by major fires.
Orval E. Faubus, who served as Governor of Arkansas longer than anyone else, announced yesterday that he would seek a seventh term by trying to unseat Governor Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat. In Seattle, former Transportation Secretary Brock Adams announced his bid for the seat held by Senator Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington.
A man convicted of two murders who came within 16 hours of execution in 1984 died in Alabama’s electric chair early today for the shooting death of a cab driver in a robbery. The inmate, Arthur Lee Jones Jr., 47 years old, was pronounced dead at 12:13 AM, said Warden Willie Johnson of Holman Prison. The execution came after the United States Supreme Court refused Thursday on a 5-to-4 vote to delay it and Gov. George C. Wallace refused to commute the sentence to life in prison. “It’s a very, very difficult matter,” Mr. Wallace said at a news conference Thursday. “At the same time, the law is the law.”
Author Margaret Randall never belonged to the Communist Party and deserves to remain in the United States so that she can be reunited with her family, a defense lawyer said at her deportation hearing in El Paso. In closing arguments, attorney Mike Maggio said the government has failed to prove that Randall was an “undesirable.” The leftist author is fighting to regain the U.S. citizenship she renounced 18 years ago while living in Mexico. Judge Martin F. Spiegel gave lawyers from each side until July 5 to submit written testimony.
A federal judge in Macon, Georgia, temporarily ordered the Ku Klux Klan to stop demonstrating and contacting students at two schools. U.S. District Judge Duross Fitzpatrick issued the temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of 18 parents who contend the activity has disrupted the education of 22 black children attending Madison County Middle School and adjacent Madison County High School in Danielsville. Robed Klansmen were apparently angered by interracial dating among students.
New York City passes its first lesbian and gay rights legislation. The New York City Council ended an often intense and emotional 15-year battle last night and approved a homosexual rights bill by an unexpectedly wide margin of 21 to 14. The Council vote, which came after a long and dramatic but unusually decorous Council hearing, was greeted by cheers and tears from supporters, their arms raised in jubilation or wrapped around each other. Opponents were silent, or already absent from the crowded chamber on the second floor of City Hall, the same stately room where the Council last considered and defeated a similar bill 12 years ago. History was not unfamiliar to the supporters. “God, I can’t believe it, after all this time,” Thomas B. Stoddard, executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said after the 35-member Council voted on the measure known as Intro. 2.
A Russian girl making a two-week peace tour of the United States is scheduled to start the tour here Friday with a hotel breakfast, a school visit and a chat with Mayor Harold Washington. The 11-year-old girl, Katya Lycheva, a fifth-grade student at Special English School No. 4 in Moscow, is also scheduled to visit New York, Washington, Houston and Los Angeles.
A blast of Canadian air that sent temperatures plummeting to near zero from the Dakotas to the Great Lakes and spread snow across the Midwest made the official start of spring seem more like the start of winter. “It’s a winter nightmare in March,” said state Trooper Baric Buck in Illinois, where Chicago-area police reported at least 150 accidents on icy, snowy roads. A high-pressure system over Minnesota funneled frigid air into the eastern half of the country, pushing I wind chills to between 15 below and 30 below zero across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, upstate New York and Vermont.
Lawrence Taylor, the New York Giants’ all-pro outside linebacker, admitted yesterday that he had been receiving professional help for “substance abuse” problems. The admission came in a four-paragraph statement prepared by Taylor and issued by the Giants.
Brian Boitano of the United States combined aerodynamics and Hollywood flourishes in a jazzy, prize-winning long program to defeat the defending champion, Aleksandr Fadeyev of the Soviet Union, and win the men’s world figure skating crown today. The 22-year-old Boitano, of Sunnyvale, Calif., in fourth place entering the finals, jumped and jitterbugged as he executed one perfect move after another in a dramatic program to Gershwin and the blues.
Wall Street passed another milestone yesterday when the Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 1,800 level for the first time and passed its third hundred-point marker this year. The index of 30 blue-chip stocks rose 16.29 points, to 1,804.24. It has been hitting records with such regularity that many stock market professionals no longer get excited. ‘It’s Old Hat’ “We’ve had so many of these centennial numbers that it’s old hat,” said William LeFevre, vice president of investment strategy for Purcell, Graham & Company. “There’s a numbness.”
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1804.24 (+16.29)
Born:
Ruby Rose, Australian model, actor (“Orange is the New Black”) recording artist, and gender activist, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
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