Administration officials said today that the central premise of a draft arms proposal to the Soviet Union was that the Russians agree explicitly to the deployment of space-based missile defense systems. These officials affirmed what others said Wednesday, namely that President Reagan was prepared to delay deployment of the proposed new systems, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, for up to seven years. Draft of Letter to Gorbachev But the officials who spoke today added that this offer would be made on the condition that Moscow agree after that period to deployment by both sides or by the United States alone. The draft proposal is in reply to a letter in June from the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The American reply, now being discussed with the allies, is to be sent this month.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said today that the experiment that caused the Chernobyl nuclear accident was intended to determine how long generating units could continue to produce electricity in an unexpected reactor shutdown. The spokesman, Gennadi Gerasimov, said in a news conference that the turbine generators of the No. 4 reactor, the one involved in the accident of April 26, were being tested to see whether they could continue to provide power for 40 to 45 seconds in the event of an emergency shutdown until the power supply could be switched over to a back-up source. A statement by the Politburo last weekend said the accident had been caused by improperly conducted experiments involving operation of the turbine generators, but it did not describe the experiments.
A Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed as a provocation an underground radical manifesto purportedly written by high-level Soviet officials, saying there was no proof of its source. The document calls for economic reforms and radical political changes that would have eliminated the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power. “There were a lot of problems with it, no reference to a source and falsehoods about such things at the amount of our debt,” Gennady I. Gerasimov told a routine briefing. The document was signed by an unknown Leningrad-based group calling itself the Movement for Social Renewal.
The last open door to Western Europe, West Berlin, has in recent weeks been swamped by a flow of people from the third world seeking asylum. And this has put new strains on the fragile fabric of East-West understandings underpinning this city’s peculiar status. Arriving lately at 300 a week, the refugees, camped in requisitioned schools and huge tents erected on community sports grounds, have also become a hot political issue with the approach of national elections in January. In Bonn, Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann warned today that the number of refugees had jumped by 109 percent from 1984 to 1985, a year when more than 74,000 applied for asylum. A total of 42,000 were registered in the first half of this year. He said some asylum-seekers would turn to terrorism and crime.
Policemen shot and killed a man today who had tossed a packet of garbage at Pope John Paul II’s summer residence and then rushed police officers with an ax. The police said the man, Roberto Porfili, 45 years old, arrived at the Pope’s summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, 15 miles south of Rome, at 4:10 AM. “He started yelling and brandishing an ax,” said Rino Monaco, the director of the police mobile unit. Mr. Porfili, the spokesman said, yelled, “This is for you and for the Pope!”
French policemen arrested four men reported to be members of the outlawed Irish National Liberation Army after finding an arms cache in a Paris apartment, an Interior Ministry spokesman said today. The four were picked up Wednesday in a raid of an apartment in the south of the city, where a large stock of grenades, detonators and guns were found. The spokesman said one of the four was believed to be a leader of the banned group, Harold Flynn, who was reported to have escaped from the Maize prison in Belfast some years ago. The arrests followed a long investigation by the police after four suspected gunrunners were arrested in Le Havre in mid-June, the Ministry said.
U.N.’s chief underwent heart surgery involving a quadruple bypass, and his spokesman said the operation was a success. The five-year term of the Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, ends in December. When asked about a second term, he has repeatedly said he was not a candidate, but Mr. Perez de Cuellar has never ruled out the possibility that he would accept a draft.
President Reagan secretly invited King Hassan II of Morocco and Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel to meet in the United States as a way of lending visible American support to their initiative, Administration officials said today. They said that Mr. Peres had also suggested having the session in the United States and told Mr. Reagan of the secret planning last week leading to the Peres-Hassan talks this week in Morocco. The two days of talks ended on Wednesday in Morocco. A communique issued today in Rabat and Jerusalem said that the talks were “of a purely exploratory nature” and that no breakthroughs were recorded.
King Hassan II and Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, in a a joint communique today, tried to play down their divergent views on Middle East peace by calling their two days of talks as “purely exploratory.” Each had his own reasons for wanting to meet, a Moroccan said. The King was eager to smooth ties with the United States, which had been angered by his decision in 1984 to sign a unity accord with Libya. At the same time, aides said, the King was eager to assert Morocco’s independence in foreign affairs.
The U.S. government has ordered an Iranian diplomat at the United Nations expelled from the country for “illegal activities counter to the security interests of the United States,” spokesman Richard C. Hottelet said. He identified the diplomat as Alireza Deyhim, listed as counselor in the Iranian U.N. Mission, but would not disclose any details. A diplomatic source said he understood Deyhim was involved in attempting to force repayment from an Iranian exile in this country who took money with a promise to deliver U.S. arms.
A bomb exploded aboard a crowded bus in north-central Sri Lanka, killing at least 31 passengers and injuring 45 others. It was the third bombing in as many days blamed on Tamil guerrillas. Authorities said some of the victims were mourners returning to the provincial capital of Anuradhapura after attending funerals for the 32 people killed Tuesday in the explosion of a land mine near the predominantly Sinhalese village of Mamaduwa. Military officials blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — the most militant of the Tamil separatist guerrilla groups — for both fatal bombings.
Former Philippine Senator Arturo Tolentino, the leader of a failed revolt who refused to swear allegiance to the government of President Corazon Aquino, will be charged with rebellion, the justice minister said. Tolentino, who earlier this month led an abortive 36-hour coup in the name of ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos, had until Thursday to pledge allegiance to the provisional constitution promulgated by Aquino. He refused, and officials said the government had no choice but to file the rebellion charges against Tolentino and 39 of his associates.
Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered his supporters during a coup attempt three weeks ago to persuade the United States that the Philippines needed him, a Government official said today. The official, Justice Minister Neptali Gonzales, said Mr. Marcos had given the order to former Assemblyman Rafael Recto after the coup leader, Arturo Tolentino, proclaimed himself acting President on July 6. According to Mr. Gonzales, a hotel telephone operator overheard Mr. Marcos to say, using Mr. Tolentino’s nickname: “Tell Turing to draft a resolution and send it to the White House to Reagan, stating you want me back.”
The deputy commander of Colombia’s M-19 leftist guerrillas was shot and killed when he tried to wrestle a rifle from a policeman after being stopped at a roadblock, the police said today. The guerrilla, Gustavo Arias Londono, 39 years old, was the third co-founder of M-19 killed by police this year. The police said they stopped his jeep at a roadblock 120 miles northwest of Bogota on Wednesday and took him to a police station along with two people who were traveling with him. Mr. Londono attempted to grab a rifle from a policeman and was shot dead, they said. M-19’s top leader, Alvaro Fayad, was killed in March and another founding member, Israel Santamaria, died in May.
A Peruvian judge issued an arrest warrant for an army general on murder charges stemming from the army’s suppression of a prison uprising last month by accused guerrilla inmates. Judge Hernan Saturno Vergara ordered the detention and arraignment of army General Jorge Rabanal on charges of murdering 124 inmates at the Lurigancho prison, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said. President Alan Garcia has charged that paramilitary police, commanded by Rabanal, executed at least 100 Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebels after they surrendered.
A civil rights monitoring group in Johannesburg said today that more than 8,000 people had been detained without trial in the first six weeks of South Africa’s newest emergency decree, imposed June 12. The estimate is higher than the 7,900 people known to have been seized in the entire seven months of the previous emergency decree, lasting from July 1985 to March 1986. Civil rights officials who helped compile the estimate acknowledged, however, that some of it was guesswork based on previous experience of trying to calculate the number of people detained. The latest Western effort to defuse South Africa’s crisis, meanwhile, seemed to have run into fresh difficulties today when Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, who is representing the Europeaan Community, arrived in Lusaka, Zambia, to be told by President Kenneth D. Kaunda that he was not welcome.
The White House indicated today that it was considering certain limited sanctions against South Africa. The White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, told reporters on Air Force One that although President Reagan opposed broad economic sanctions as counterproductive, the White House viewed “other sanctions” as a distinct possibility. President Reagan, arriving here from Miami, told reporters: “We haven’t closed any doors.” In South Africa, a civil-rights monitoring group said that more than 8,000 people had been detained without trial in the first six weeks since Pretoria declared a state of emergency.
The Commonwealth Games opened tonight as an unintended showcase of international discord, with 31 of 58 nations withholding their athletes in order to protest Britain’s rejection of economic sanctions against South Africa. World-class politics was the dominant event as Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, welcomed 1,600 athletes in the name of global fellowship. More than 700 other competitors were absent from the ceremony in Meadowbank Stadium in what was designed to be an embarrassing rebuff of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain.
The Reagan Administration is now forecasting substantially more economic growth in 1987 than it expected just five and a half months ago, according to confidential budget documents. The new forecast also acknowledges that economic growth this year will be less than originally estimated in February, when President Reagan sent his budget to Congress. Despite the current weakness in the economy, confirmed by several statistical reports, the Administration estimates that the economy will grow by 4.5 percent, as measured by comparing the fourth quarter of 1987 with the fourth quarter of this year, according to the documents. The February forecast predicted only 4 percent growth. Both figures are adjusted to eliminate the effects of inflation.
President Reagan meets with a little girl with cancer who wrote to him during his stay in the hospital to cheer him up.
President Reagan attends a rally at the University of South Carolina for Tommy Hartnet who is running for Governor. President Reagan came to this economically troubled state today to campaign against “big government,” the Democrats, high taxes and even Walter F. Mondale. Using many of the themes that marked his campaigns in 1980 and 1984, Mr. Reagan urged support for a number of Republican candidates who face close, perhaps uphill, contests in November because of South Carolina’s faltering economy, which has worsened because of the severe drought. But Mr. Reagan, appearing at the University of South Carolina Coliseum, addressed the state’s economic plight only briefly. Instead he stressed the nation’s economic “expansion,” and “this new confidence and energy” across the nation. The partisan, flag-waving crowd responded with restrained enthusiasm.
Parts of the Southeast got sprinklings of rain yesterday but no real relief from the months-old dry spell. There were more Air Force airlifts of hay donated by farmers in the Middle West and the North for famished livestock. And in Washington, Secretary of Agriculture Richard E. Lyng announced that a special Government group would help speed Federal aid to drought-stricken farmers. He announced no new initiatives or financial aid but said existing programs would be tailored to help farmers recover from crop and livestock losses.
A Federal jury today convicted a former Navy radioman, Jerry A. Whitworth, of espionage for his participation in a Soviet spy ring that the Government has called the most damaging espionage conspiracy in decades. The jury deliberated 52 hours over 10 days before returning guilty verdicts on seven counts of espionage and five counts of tax fraud. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on an eighth espionage count. Seated between his two defense attorneys, Mr. Whitworth, 46 years old, remained expressionless as the verdicts were read. Defense attorneys said later that they had not had time to talk with Mr. Whitworth about the possibility of an appeal.
A day after the Senate narrowly staved off a challenge to his confirmation as a Federal appellate judge, Daniel A. Manion met with reporters today to address the questions that had been raised about his qualifications. “I’m quite sure I can handle it,” he said, “and I know after a few months or a year or so on the job, I will be up to speed.” Mr. Manion, a 40-year-old lawyer in this city of 100,000 people, offered an explanation for the many mistakes in grammar and spelling he made in briefs that were submitted to the Senate, outlined his judicial philosophy and disavowed any connection with the John Birch Society. He attributed to partisan politics much of the criticism that Democrats had aimed at him. “I can take that,” Mr. Manion, a former State Senator, said. “I’ve been involved in politics a long time.”
The former head of the space shuttle program, Jesse W. Moore, disagreed with his deputy today and testified that he had not been told about details of faulty booster rockets in an August briefing that a Presidential commission said should have grounded the shuttle fleet. The apparent conflict in testimony given under oath to the House Committee on Science and Technology came as the panel continued its review of the commission’s report on the Challenger explosion on January 28, which killed the crew of seven. The issue, raised by Representative James H. Scheuer, Democrat of New York, centered on a briefing August 19 at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In the briefing, engineers from the booster rocket’s maker, Morton Thiokol, and the space agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Ala., are said to have detailed the problems with the rocket’s O ring seals, which have been cited as the cause of the Challenger explosion.
A bill that would prohibit private employers from forcing workers to retire at age 70 was approved by the House Education and Labor Committee and sent to the House. The bill, which has drawn opposition from business groups, would allow private-sector employees to continue working past age 70 if they can demonstrate continued competence. Current federal law allows most federal employees to continue working past age 70, but it allows private companies to force workers to retire at that age.
The leader of a high school climbing expedition on Mt. Hood in which nine people died should have led the group back five hours into the climb because of fatigue and weather conditions, a group of experts said. The climbers from Oregon Episcopal School in Portland were caught on the mountain when a storm struck on May 12. Three were found frozen to death on May 14, and eight others were found inside a cave on May 15, six of them dead. The school assembled a committee of climbing experts to investigate the climb and assess the school’s outdoors program, which included a Mt. Hood climb for most sophomores. School officials refused to comment on the report.
The secretary of the Navy, continuing a Pentagon crackdown on smoking, has issued a directive ordering new limits on tobacco use in offices, on ships and inside aircraft. The directive from Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. also flatly bans the sale of tobacco products inside all Navy medical and dental facilities, calls for a major “educational-awareness” campaign, and orders the men and women who conduct basic training to cease all smoking “in the presence of students, recruits and officer candidates.”
Housing Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr. announced a two-month postponement until September 30 of regulations prohibiting illegal aliens from living in public housing projects and other federally subsidized units. The regulations, published April 1 and originally set to take effect July 30, require residents of public housing projects to provide proof of citizenship or legal residency and allow for eviction of illegal aliens.
Negotiators for the city of Detroit and 7,000 striking municipal workers returned to the bargaining table under court order to try to end a 9-day walkout that has brought city services to a standstill. “It’s a very delicate stage in the negotiations,” said Roger Cheek, the city’s chief negotiator, before resuming talks with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The strike has idled city buses, garbage collection and closed the zoo and Detroit Institute of Arts.
Members of the United Steelworkers of America employed by the USX Corporation have voted to authorize a strike against the steelmaker if agreement is not reached on a new contract, the union said today. James McGeehan, the chief negotiator with USX, formerly the United States Steel Corporation, released the results of the vote at a meeting of the union’s negotiating committee. The union said the vote, from 59 of the 75 local unions representing USX employees, was 10,051 in favor of empowering the negotiating committee to call a strike, and 66 opposed. The current contract expires July 31. Negotiations are continuing.
A 60-ton mobile crane failed to make a turn at the bottom of a hill and smashed into an apartment building in Slatington, Pennsylvania, killing two people and injuring three others, including the driver and the crane operator. About 45 elderly people living in the subsidized apartments were evacuated after the crane hit a corner of the building. Ruth Zellner, 66, and Charles Moyer, 69, were found dead in the rubble, said Lehigh County Deputy Coroner Wayne Snyder.
About 400 protesters rallied outside Trans World Airlines headquarters in New York to demand that company Chairman Carl C. Icahn rehire about 5,000 flight attendants who are still out of work despite an unconditional offer in May to go back. The Independent Federation of Flight Attendants went on strike March 7 after Icahn asked its members to take a 22% pay cut and a 22% cut in benefits. The union called off the strike May 21. Members were left without a contract and most found themselves out of work because TWA had hired replacements.
The Interior Department announced today that it had reached a settlement in a 20-year dispute over subsidized water for farming in California’s Central Valley. Under the proposed settlement, the department’s Bureau of Reclamation will continue to deliver water for irrigation of cotton, barley, wheat and other crops in the Westlands Water District, chiefly at rates established in 1963. The water comes from the Sacramento River through the Federal Central Valley Project. By undoing an opinion written by the department’s solicitor in the Carter Administration, the agreement would also include in the Westlands Water District 156,000 acres of land that Congress did not authorize as eligible for the subsidized water. James G. Watt, when he was Interior Secretary, held that delivery of subsidized water to the additional acres was illegal, as did other critics.
Eleven nuns who signed a 1984 advertisement saying “a diversity of opinions regarding abortion exists among committed Catholics” today denied a Vatican statement that they now adhere to the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion. Their statement was prompted by a new threat to expel two, Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey, Sisters of Notre Dame who work in Charleston, West Virginia, for refusing to publicly adhere to the church’s opposition to all abortion.
Bribery for military contracts was cited by Federal prosecutors who announced indictments against 19 people. Those indicted include employees of some of the nation’s best-known military contractors and the kickbacks involved such programs as the space agency’s shuttle, the B-1 bomber and the F-15, F-16 and F-18 fighter planes.
More than 1,000 secret documents about the Air Force’s advanced Stealth fighter plane cannot be found in the Lockheed Corporation’s California plant. The company’s chairman said, “Our internal laxness is inexcusable.” The craft is extremely hard to detect by radar.
An airline pilot, frustrated by long waits to take off from Atlanta, stunned passengers there by announcing he was “sick and tired” of airport delays and walked off an Eastern Airlines DC-9. Eastern assigned a second pilot to the flight, which departed two hours late. The airline said the pilot who quit the helm was later granted early retirement.
All-terrain vehicles have opened miles of new roads and millions of hitherto inaccessible areas of public lands. However, the mobile and easily operated vehicles have been blamed for hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries and for seriously damaging the nation’s recreation areas.
The 13th Commonwealth Games open in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Major League Baseball:
The Baltimore Orioles topped the Chicago White Sox, 12–6. Rick Dempsey’s three-run homer capped a seven-run first inning and Baltimore added home runs in each of the next three innings. Jim Dwyer and Lee Lacy both drove in three runs with three hits, including a home run. Jim Traber, a rookie, hit his fourth homer in five games.
Tim Raines led off the 14th inning with a single and scored on Mitch Webster’s double tonight, sending the Montreal Expos to a 6–5 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. Before that regularly scheduled game, Dave Parker hit a grand slam and Eric Davis added a three-run homer to give the Reds a 10–2 victory in the completion of a game suspended July 13 because of rain in Montreal. The game was resumed here with the Reds leading, 3–2, in the top of the sixth and the Expos as the home team.
The Kansas City Royals blanked the Detroit Tigers, 1–0. Lonnie Smith broke up a scoreless game in the eighth inning with a home run. Scott Bankhead (4–4) gained the victory for Kansas City. Dan Quisenberry got his ninth save by retiring Alan Trammell on a forceout with runners on first and second and two out.
The Houston Astros downed the Philadelphia Phillies, 9–3. Mike Scott, the major-league strikeout leader, fanned a career-high 13 batters and Kevin Bass went 5 for 5 as Houston won its seventh straight. Scott (10–6) pitched seven innings and gave up five hits. He raised his strikeout total to 187.
The Los Angeles Dodgers clobbered the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9–2. Franklin Stubbs hit two home runs, and Bill Madlock and Jeff Hamilton also hit homers as Los Angeles completed a sweep of its three-game series. Fernando Valenzuela (13–6) limited the Pirates to five hits over seven innings to win his third straight decision and become the National League’s first 13-game winner.
The Texas Rangers defeated the Cleveland Indians, 7–3. Mike Loynd went six impressive innings in his major-league debut and Curtis Wilkerson tripled home two runs, helping Texas snap a seven-game losing streak. Loynd, a right-hander making only his sixth professional start, allowed five hits, struck out six and walked one. Phil Niekro (7–7) lasted only three and two-thirds innings and had a four-game winning streak snapped.
Chicago White Sox 6, Baltimore Orioles 12
Montreal Expos 6, Cincinnati Reds 5
Kansas City Royals 1, Detroit Tigers 0
Houston Astros 9, Philadelphia Phillies 3
Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Pittsburgh Pirates 2
Cleveland Indians 3, Texas Rangers 7
The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been creeping up this week, lost 6.75 points, to 1,791.62. Market analysts said stock prices, which have been moving in a very narrow range for the last week, are being affected most by the uncertain economy, which has done little to lure back vacationers. Another problem, according to experts, is that stock prices are down so sharply this summer that investors remain leery of putting money back into equities. “The patient is going to take a time to recover,” said Harvey Deutsch, a market analyst with Purcell, Graham & Company, who thinks that by the middle of August “the market will resume its up trend and score some very substantial gains.”
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1791.62 (-6.75)
Born:
Megan Park, Canadian actress (“The Secret Life of the American Teenager”), in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada.
Alissa Firsova, Russian-British classical pianist and composer (“Tree of Hope”; “Paradiso”), and conductor, in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Scott Van Slyke, MLB outfielder (Los Angeles Dodgers), in Chesterfield, Missouri.
Miguel Socolovich, Venezuelan MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Atlanta Braves), in Caracas, Venezuela.
Richie Brockel, NFL tight end (Carolina Panthers), in Phoenix, Arizona.
Died:
Fritz A. Lipman, 87, German-American biochemist (discoverer co-enzymes, Nobel 1953).
History Diaries 