President Reagan has privately informed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain that, in his view, the Iceland summit meeting cleared the way for a United States-Soviet agreement to reduce medium-range nuclear missiles, White House officials said today. Mr. Reagan’s private assurances are similar to the public message that the Administration has offered about the summit meeting’s outcome as the White House moved firmly to plant the issue into this fall’s election campaign. White House officials said that they believed Mr. Reagan had gained politically from his handling of the meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, and that he had increased public support for his Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.” They said they expected Mr. Reagan to use support for the space-based missile defense system as a key campaign isssue in the November election.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said today that the Soviet arms proposals presented in Iceland were a single package, but that this did not rule out continued talks in Geneva on separate issues. The spokesman, Gennadi I. Gerasimov, said this was what the Soviet arms negotiator, Viktor P. Karpov, had in mind when he said in London and Bonn this week that the issues of medium-range missiles and nuclear testing could be negotiated separately from space-based missile defenses. Before the Iceland meeting, the Soviet side had linked the issue of the missile defenses only to a reduction of long-range, or strategic, nuclear missiles. But in Iceland, the Americans got the impression that Mikhail S. Gorbachev was interconnecting all arms issues in a single deal.
Most discussions on arms control take for granted that a reduction in nuclear weapons is a desirable goal and that the greater the reduction the greater the benefits to mankind. But some arms experts question the value of any agreement, such as the United States and the Soviet Union discussed at their Iceland meeting, that would dramatically change the level of nuclear weapons. If the elimination of nuclear weapons is not accompanied by a rebalancing of conventional forces, they say, the world could become more dangerous, not safer. These experts point out that however dangerous the current strategy of mutual assured destruction appears, it has effectively kept the peace. It has also provided a background of stability against which overall American-Soviet relations have been conducted.
In a surprising resolution of a longstanding human rights case, the Soviet Union let an American industrialist take an ailing Jewish geneticist from a Moscow hospital and fly him and his wife to the United States today. The State Department welcomed the Soviet decision to allow the industrialist, Armand Hammer, to take the couple, David and Cecilia Goldfarb, after their requests to emigrate had been blocked for eight years. Dr. Hammer’s private jet, with the Goldfarbs abroad, landed at 6:15 P.M. at Newark Airport, and Dr. Goldfarb was taken by ambulance to Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York for an examination. It was a moment of emotion for Dr. Goldfarb as he was greeted by his son, Alex, who emigrated 11 years ago and is now a Columbia University microbiologist. Dr. Goldfarb’s daughter, Olga, and her family stayed behind in the Soviet Union. Some American officials and human rights experts said the Goldfarbs might be the first in a series of dissidents and would-be emigrants to be allowed to leave in the wake of the Iceland talks between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
President Reagan participates in a Cabinet meeting to report about his recent trip to Iceland and meetings with General Secretary Gorbachev.
The World Jewish Congress today made public Yugoslav documents that include testimony by a German officer who accused Kurt Waldheim of planning reprisal measures taken by the German Army in World War II. Mr. Waldheim, a former United Nations Secretary General, is now President of Austria. According to the documents, the German officer, Johan Mayer, testified before the Yugoslav war crimes commission in 1947 that Mr. Waldheim served as an intelligence officer in the “I-C unit” that planned the killing of civilians, the burning of villages, and other reprisal measures taken by the German Army Group E during its retreat from Greece after 1944. “Lieutenant Waldheim’s duties were to suggest to his commanding officer all actions of the I-C and to prepare all written reports for that purpose,” Mr. Mayer testified. “Those written reports dealt with the question of hostages, reprisal measures and the treatment of war prisoners and civilian population.”
Gunmen burst into a farmhouse in Northern Ireland and killed a Roman Catholic man and his 76-year-old mother, police said. An extremist Protestant group, the outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters, claimed responsibility and said the slain man, Terry Mullan, 31, was an intelligence officer for the outlawed Irish Republican Army. However, the IRA, which is fighting to drive the British out of Ulster and unite the province with the Irish Republic, denied that Mullan was a member. The attack took place near the village of Ballynahinch, 20 miles south of Belfast.
The Greek Communist Party called on its members Wednesday night to withhold support from Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s Socialists in the runoff for the Athens mayoralty on Sunday. It urged them instead to use their votes to strike at the policies of the Government. The action creates a strong possibility that conservatives will capture control of the capital. It represent s the first significant split in runoff elections between the two principal left-wing parties since democracy was restored in 1974 and the Communist Party was legalized. The loss of Athens would be a severe blow to the prestige of Mr. Papandreou but would not immediately endanger his hold over the national Government. After a solid re-election victory last year, his second term of office runs until 1989. He holds a parliamentary majority of 160 members or supporters, compared with 110 for the conservative New Democracy Party and 10 for the Communists. After three days of fruitless negotiations between the Socialists and Communists, the Communists announced that they had not been able to persuade the governing party to commit itself to a change in the electoral law. This was the price the party had demanded for consenting to throw its support to Mr. Papandreou’s forces.
Olympic leaders will vote today in Lausanne, Switzerland, to choose who will host the 1992 games. Olympic organizers say that Barcelona is the favorite over Paris and four other cities.
An Arab on trial in London on charges of attempting to blow up an Israeli airliner by duping his pregnant Irish girlfriend into carrying a bomb aboard in her suitcase admitted that he is still married to a Polish woman but again declared his love for Ann Marie Murphy, 32. Jordanian-born Nezar Hindawi, 32, repeatedly denied charges that he plotted with Syrian intelligence to blow up the El Al plane in London last April 17. Hindawi claimed he thought the suitcase contained drugs for a deal he hoped would bring him $275,000.
The Israeli Air Force and Navy launched large-scale attacks today against suspected Palestinian guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon and the police said an Israeli fighter jet had been shot down by ground fire. An Israeli Army spokesman in Jerusalem confirmed that a fighter jet had been shot down while attacking Palestinian bases near Sidon. The spokesman said one of the fighter’s two pilots was rescued in a “quick and daring” mission by Israeli attack helicopters. The other pilot was still missing, the spokesman said. Earlier the Lebanese police said the two pilots had been taken prisoner by Lebanese Shiite militiamen. Other reports said they had been captured by Palestinians in the area. Jets, Helicopters and Boats Israeli jets continued to fly over southern Lebanon after the raid, while Israeli naval vessels steamed up and down the Sidon coastline, according to witnesses. The witnesses said Israeli helicopters were also seen.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry called in the Egyptian Ambassador to deliver a protest today after the Palestine Liberation Organization claimed resonsibility, in a message issued in Cairo, for the grenade attack Wednesday night in Jerusalem. One Israeli civilian was killed and about 65 others wounded when three Soviet-made F-1 fragmentation grenades were thrown at a group of Israeli soldiers and their families in a parking lot soon after they left a ceremony at the Wailing Wall. Hospital officials said today that 35 of the wounded, 18 of them soldiers, remained hospitalized, including 7 with moderately severe wounds and one in very critical condition.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir today resolved all of the issues holding up their job-exchange, but members of Mr. Shamir’s Likud bloc rejected part of the agreement and further negotiations were expected. In a meeting today, Mr. Peres and Mr. Shamir worked out a three-point resolution of their differences. First, Mr. Peres agreed to a Likud demand that the former Likud Minister of Justice and Finance, Yitzhak Modai, be allowed to rejoin the Government under Mr. Shamir as a Minister Without Portfolio. Mr. Modai was thrown out of the Cabinet last July for insulting Mr. Peres.
Five Soviet soldiers who defected to the Islamic guerrillas in Afghanistan have sent appeals to President Reagan requesting political asylum, according to an official of Freedom House.
Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger said today that the United States would seek to provide early warning radar planes to Pakistan “as quickly as possible” to help defend against incursions from Afghanistan. At a news conference after two days of meetings with Pakistani officials, Mr. Weinberger said the possibility was discussed of having American crews fly patrol missions in Pakistani airspace, providing training and deterrence while deliveries of planes to the Pakistani Air Force was awaited.
Sri Lankan troops wiped out rebel camps and drove Tamil guerrillas from the jungles of the Mannar and Vavuniya districts in a four-day sweep in which 65 rebels and 14 soldiers were killed, the government said. Meanwhile, a 19-year-old Tamil civilian told a news conference at Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, where most Tamils live, that the army had hired him to kill guerrilla leaders. Selva Bala said he was hired to assassinate Velupillai Prabakaran, chief of the Liberation Tigers rebel group, and a Jaffna insurgent leader known as Kittu. The rebels are seeking a separate Tamil nation in the north and east.
Lieutenant General Hussain Mohammed Ershad claimed victory in Bangladesh’s presidential election amid charges of widespread ballot fraud as opposition parties held protest rallies in Dhaka, the capital. “I don’t have to rig the election to win the election,” Ershad told a news conference. The unofficial tally from Wednesday’s voting, boycotted by the main opposition parties and marred by clashes between police and crowds, several bombings and a one-day general strike, gave the president a nearly 15-to-1 lead over his nearest challenger. Ershad reiterated his pledge to lift the martial law he imposed after seizing power in a coup in 1982. Independent observers said they expected the leader, President H. M. Ershad, to continue to rule in an authoritarian manner with military support.
South Korea’s Government arrested an opposition lawmaker this morning and opposition party members continued a sit-in at the National Assembly in protest. The developments were expected to dampen chances of a compromise on a crucial issue of constitutional revision. According to reports reaching Tokyo, South Korea’s legislature voted late tonight to allow the Government to arrest the opposition lawmaker for remarks that the Government contends violated its strict national security laws.
Philippine President Corazon Aquino unveiled a land distribution program for Negros Island, where widespread poverty and malnutrition have fueled a Communist insurgency. The island has been a rebel stronghold since the sugar industry, its main business, collapsed in recent years. Aquino said 24,700 acres of sugar land will be turned over to farmers, who will be encouraged to grow other crops. She made the announcement in Bacolod during the first stop in a two-day tour of central islands to begin her campaign for ratification of a new constitution in a January 23 plebiscite.
An American captured in Nicaragua when a rebel supply plane was shot down faces legal proceedings starting Monday in a political court, the Government announced.
George P. Shultz toured the rubble left by El Salvador’s earthquake. The Secretary of State called the $50 million in aid approved by Congress a down payment on hundreds of millions needed.
A mine placed by anti-government rebels exploded on the railway line linking Mozambique with South Africa, derailing a train and damaging the track, Mozambique’s official news agency reported. It said the blast occurred 25 miles northwest of the capital, Maputo, and it blamed the rebel Mozambican National Resistance. Mozambican railway officials said repairs are under way and that the line is expected to be operational again after today. The right-wing rebels have been fighting against the socialist government since the country gained independence from Portugal in 1975.
Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and poet, becomes the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Senate gave initial approval Thursday to a $576 billion comprehensive appropriation bill for 1987, and worked into the early morning today as Congress pushed to finish for the year. But the compromise package, approved by a voice vote, remained subject to amendment. One amendment, to delete $151 million for the T-46A jet trainer, which is built on Long Island, led to a filibuster by the two Senators from New York. This caused the Senate to be stalled late into the night, when the filibuster was set aside so other amendments could be considered. Senate Adjourns Early today the Republican leadership failed to resolve the deadlock and the Senate adjourned until later today.
The leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives agreed today on a parliamentary compromise to provide final passage to the anti-drug bill while giving House members another chance to demonstrate their support for the death penalty. Under the agreement, the House was to vote on twin versions of the bill, one with the death penalty and one without it. The two versions would be linked as a single legislative vehicle, with one vote serving to send both to the Senate. The Senate would then take its choice in a vote scheduled for Friday, sending either bill to the President’s desk. It is virtually certain that the version that will clear the Senate will be the one without the death penalty.
President Reagan attends a swearing-in ceremony for Dr. William R. Graham as Science Advisor to the President.
Presidential advisers have softened their strong recommendation that the President veto a $9 billion program to clean up toxic waste sites, Administration officials reported today. Word of a shift in what had been adamant Administration opposition to the new waste cleanup legislation came as momentum built in Congress to head off, or, if necessary, overcome a Presidential veto. Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate Republican leader, sought the signatures of colleagues today on a letter to President Reagan urging him to sign the legislation. The letter called the bill to strengthen the toxic waste cleanup program “the only realistic compromise.”
A leading Republican Senator said that President Reagan indicated today that he would probably sign a comprehensive immigration bill on which House and Senate negotiators agreed this week. The Senator, Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, the assistant Republcian leader, said he had received the assurance in a half-hour meeting with Mr. Reagan at the White House. Final Congressional approval of the bill appeared held up by the objections of several senators opposed to provisions offering legal status to illegal aliens. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, was the only Senator to speak forcefully against the bill as the Senate took up the compromise measure approved Wednesday by the House of Representatives.
The U.S. imposed the biggest tariff in decades — 15 percent — to protect lumber companies and their workers from Canadian competition that the Reagan Administration said is government subsidized.
The 1986 midterm campaign has repeatedly been declared “themeless” and “issueless” by political organizers, but some issues, involving economics, the environment and military spending, are popping up with remarkable frequency in both Democratic and Republican camps. For the most part, the contests for the House, the Senate and 36 governorships remain localized, but politicians say the campaign in many areas is evolving into a laboratory in which the themes and ideas of the future are marketed, tested and stored. Some politicians say that the “issuelessness” of 1986 may really be the passing from the scene of the tax-and-spend themes that have dominated politics for the six years of the Reagan Administration.
Senate challengers in California and Florida, where this year’s two costliest Senate races are taking place, have matched the incumbents in collecting money through Sept. 30 and have already shattered fund-raising records in those states. Senator Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, has raised $8 million since January 1, 1985, while his Republican challenger, Representative Ed Zschau, has collected $8.5 million in the same period, according to an analysis of the latest campaign finance reports. In Florida’s Senate race, which is running second to California in money raised, Senator Paula Hawkins, a Republican, collected $5.2 million from January 1, 1985, through September 30, while Governor Bob Graham, her Democratic challenger, raised $5 million in the same period, according to their reports. The reports were to be filed by today with the Federal Election Commission. But campaign officials in several of the most hotly contested Senate races made their reports available before the commission deadline.
Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards testified before an East Baton Rouge grand jury investigating a state pardons-for-sale scandal and the district attorney said he is considering whether to seek an indictment against him for obstruction of justice. “I am not involved,” Edwards said after spending an hour and 20 minutes in his voluntary appearance. But District Attorney Bryan Bush, while giving no details, said: “Something came up during (Edwards’) testimony — new information that relates to the pardon probe.”
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, following a recommendation by experts from the National Research Council, said it will build a second horizontal test stand for the redesigned space shuttle booster rockets. NASA said that the new stand, which will be built at the Utah plant of rocket maker Morton Thiokol Inc., “will be designed to simulate, more closely than the existing SRM (solid rocket motor) test stand, the stresses on the SRM during an actual shuttle launch and ascent. The agency is seeking a new joint system to eliminate the flaws that led to the Challenger disaster.
No transfer of control at CBS Inc. has taken place despite top executive changes and Loews’s purchase of nearly 25 percent of CBS’s stock, the Federal Communications Commission ruled without dissent.
The U.S. performs a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
The nation’s largest operator of communications satellites said today that it had developed a surprisingly simple technique for greatly prolonging the life of satellites now in orbit, a move that should lessen the acute need for launching vehicles since the space shuttle disaster. The technique, announced by the Comsat Corporation, chiefly involves a subtle change in the orientation to the earth of certain communications satellites. The change, recently carried out successfully on a Comsat satellite, is expected to cut by up to 90 percent the amount of fuel that satellites burn each year in compensating for forces that cause them to drift out of position. Lack of fuel frequently cuts short the working life of a satellite, even if its electronics are in perfect working order.
Dockworkers in New Orleans returned to their jobs after negotiators for three longshoremen’s union locals reached tentative agreements with stevedoring companies. Talks between Locals 854, 1494 and 1802 and the New Orleans Steamship Association, which represents most of the companies at the Port of New Orleans, ended after the International Longshoremen’s Association. Local 3000, the area’s largest, ratified a new contract the day before. The pacts must be ratified in a vote by the 2,000 dockworkers, who walked off their jobs a week ago.
More than $100 million in ancient gold, silver and jewels was divided among investors in Mel Fisher’s 16-year quest for a Spanish galleon that sank off Key West, Florida, in 1622. “I bought a dream, and I always knew it was there. It’s a dream come true,” said Leah Miguel, a curator with Fisher’s Treasure Salvors Inc., who received a gold bar and two emeralds in the payoff in Key West. A computer assigned the 600 investors and employees points, given to every artifact found on the Nuestra Senora de Atocha in July, 1985.
Telecommunications are growing strongly. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company and four of the seven regional Bell companies reported improved third-quarter earnings.
Firefighters in Columbus, Ohio, safely burned 600 pounds of rotting dynamite found in a rented storage locker after 1,700 people were evacuated from a one-mile radius that included a giant shopping mall and three large hotels. Three miles of nearby Interstate 70 and several city roads also were closed shortly before experts ignited the dynamite. Authorities had feared an explosion but it did not occur. John Gerrard Reider, 30, formerly of Columbus, was arrested in Kansas City, Missouri, on charges of possession of an explosive by a convicted felon and improper storage of explosives.
Secular humanism is the target of conservative evangelical Christians in Alabama that are challenging state textbooks. Dan Daniels, a leader in Mobile’s largest church, is the moral point man in a politically powerful alliance.
Residents braced today for the Missouri River to crest for the second time in two weeks of flooding that has been blamed for two deaths. The Missouri initially crested at 37.7 feet on October 7 in St. Charles, a city of 40,000 people 15 miles northwest of St. Louis.
Imports of used tires have been halted by the Public Health Service because of the possible presence of the disease-carrying Asian tiger mosquito, federal officials said. Dr. Thomas Monath, a viral disease specialist at the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, said that the tiger mosquito breeds in water found in used tires that are kept outdoors.
A new way to produce large quantities of disease-fighting human antibodies that may be used to treat specific infections or diagnose unknown diseases may be near, researchers at the National Institutes of Health said. Until now, they said, most of these specific antibodies have been derived from mice, which limits their usefulness in the treatment of humans because of possible rejection problems. The scientists said they have developed a method for making the antibodies from white blood cells called B-lymphocytes.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science has been awarded to James M. Buchanan, a 67-year-old American professor, for pioneering development of new methods for analyzing economic and political decision-making. Mr. Buchanan is an austere scholar. His views about how economics interacts with politics have slowly become a major school of thought.
American pop singer Marie Osmond weds Brian Blosil at the Jordan River Temple in South Jordan, Utah. They divorce in 2007.
Joe Raposo’s musical “Raggedy Ann: The Musical Adventure,” starring Ivy Austin, opens at the Nederlander Theatre, New York City, and runs for 5 performances.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards organizes a concert celebrating rock and roll legend Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri; performers include Richards, Berry, Johnnie Johnson, Eric Clapton, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Cray, and Julian Lennon, among others.
Mets and Red Sox fans clamored in anticipation of the opening of the World Series Saturday night in Shea Stadium, with Ron Darling pitching against Bruce Hurst of the Red Sox. Mets caps and T-shirts dotted New York’s horizon and Red Sox souvenirs sprouted all around jubilant Boston.
Stock prices moved slightly higher on Wall Street yesterday and trading volume remained brisk in a session dominated by corporate earnings reports and, especially, takeover speculation. “The whole environment’s dominated by speculators, traders and takeover players,” said Michael Metz of Oppenheimer & Company. “There isn’t a serious investor in the market today.” Some market analysts, however, would argue that yesterday was more of an old-fashioned session than others lately, with investors actually looking at fundamental corporate developments like earnings before trading stocks. Third-quarter corporate earnings reports, coming in a flood this week, were particularly important. The Dow Jones industrial average, up in the previous three sessions, including Wednesday’s 31-point gain, rose 4.50 points, to 1,836.19. Much of Wednesday’s improvement was because of arbitrage activity between the stock and futures markets, another development that has recently overshadowed more customary activities on Wall Street.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1836.19 (+4.5)
Born:
Inna (Elena Apostoleanu) Romanian electronic-dance music singer-songwriter (“Hot”, “Sun Is Up”), in Mangalia, Romania.
Died:
C. Wttewaall van Stoetwegen, 85, CHU Member of Dutch parliament.
