Secretary of State George P. Shultz made public today the texts of President Reagan’s main arms control proposals handed to Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the Iceland summit meeting last weekend. Mr. Shultz said he did so to make it clear that the United States had proposed abolishing only both sides’ ballistic missiles, not all nuclear forces. What Mr. Reagan actually proposed to Mr. Gorbachev in Reykjavik suddenly became an issue because Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, a leading Senate military expert, contended today that Mr. Reagan had told Congressional leaders that he had suggested abolition of all nuclear weapons. Other officials had said he had called only for banning ballistic missiles, the supersonic weapons that make up the backbone of both Soviet and American long-range and medium-range forces.
President Reagan today described the planned “Star Wars” space-based missile shield, which was the central source of contention at the Iceland summit meeting, as “purely peaceful technology” comparable to the development of radar. Mr. Reagan’s speech at a Republican campaign rally here was marked by an absence of anti-Soviet statements, a message of optimism about the Reykjavik meeting and a defense of “Star Wars,” officially called the Strategic Defense Initiative. “You know, before World War II, the British were developing a new defense system — it was called radar,” Mr. Reagan told an audience of nearly 10,000, many of the waving flags and carrying balloons, in a sports arena at the University of North Dakota.
A day after releasing one prominent dissident, the Soviet authorities cleared the way today for the emigration of a Jewish couple seeking to go to Israel so that the wife can donate bone marrow to her brother, who has leukemia. The couple, Viktor and Inessa Flerov, have been trying to leave for Israel with their two daughters since last March. Mr. Flerov said he was summoned this afternoon to the Soviet visa agency and told he could prepare to leave. He said the family would leave in two weeks, the time they were given to complete the required paperwork and close out their affairs in Moscow.
Belgium’s King Baudouin today rejected the resignation of Prime Minister Wilfried Martens and his Cabinet members, who offered to step down in a dispute over a Mayor who refused to prove his knowledge of Flemish, a court spokesman said. The King had withheld his decision since Tuesday, when Mr. Martens offered his resignation over a dispute that pitted French-speaking ministers of his Christian Democrat-Liberal coalition against their Flemish-speaking colleagues. The dispute involved the status of Jose Happart, Mayor of Fourons, also known as Voeren, near Belgium’s eastern border. A Belgian court had declared Mr. Happart unfit for the position of Mayor because he refused to prove a knowledge of Flemish as required by law.
Robert Maxwell intends to acquire a major United States communications company this year. The British media baron has begun research and informal talks with several major concerns. Mr. Maxwell has excluded newspapers and cable television companies from his plans.
A Jordanian accused of trying to blow up an Israeli airliner denied today that Syrian Air Force intelligence agents had directed the plot and speculated instead that Israeli agents had staged the crime. The defendant, Nezar Hindawi, faced a series of prosecution questions about how he came to write down for police detectives the names of various Syrian officials, including Brigadier General Mohammed Kholi, chief of Syrian Air Force intelligence, and his aide, Colonel Haitem Said. Mr. Hindawi replied that he was merely writing them down at the police questioner’s suggestion and was in no way confessing to the bomb plot. The police testified Mr. Hindawi confessed he was directed by Colonel Said in giving luggage containing a hidden bomb to his unwitting pregnant lover, Ann Murphy, to take on an El Al flight to Tel Aviv on April 17. He denied this repeatedly, suggesting that Israeli officials planted the bomb as an embarrassment to Syria.
A senior Israeli military official warned the Lebanese Shiite militia Amal today that it should immediately return the navigator of the Israeli F-4 Phantom that was shot down on Thursday. The navigator was apparently captured by Amal after the jet was downed during a raid on targets identified by Lebanese and Israeli officials as Palestinian guerrilla bases in Lebanon. “Israel insists that Amal return the captive to it immediately,” Uri Lubrani, the coordinator for Lebanese affairs at the Israeli Defense Ministry, said on the Israeli radio. “Yesterday’s action by the Israeli Air Force was not directed at Lebanon or Lebanese civilians but solely at terrorists.” “Israel will leave no stone unturned when the safety of one of its soldiers is at stake,” Mr. Lubrani said, adding that Amal would be held responsible for the captive airman’s security if it has the pilot, as the militia says it does.
The mainline Lebanese Shiite militia Amal said today that it was holding an Israeli navigator whose jet fighter was shot down over southern Lebanon on Thursday. “The captive has a fractured arm but otherwise he is well,” a spokesman for the group said. The statement was issued after press reports had said the Israeli flier had been killed after bailing out of his F-4 Phantom jet.
President Chaim Herzog of Israel formally asked Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir to form a new government today. The move came after Mr. Shamir and Prime Minister Shimon Peres appeared to have resolved the differences that delayed their job switch.
Britain’s tabloids had a field day today insuring that remarks attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh about Chinese “slitty eyes” and how “ghastly” he had found Peking would become the longest-remembered happening of the royal tour of China by Queen Elizabeth II. The most sophisticated headline was in The Daily Mail, which asked, “Does Britain Need a Terracotta Duke?” Under it was a photograph of a grim-faced Queen inspecting the terra cotta warriors guarding the imperial tomb of the Chin Dynasty emperor near Xian and a heading that said, “They’re tall, dignified, ceremonial and above everything else, they are silent.” With puns and cartoons, they are telling why diplomats on the tour are choking with embarrassment. “Philip Gets It All Wong,” screamed one front-page headline.
President Corazon C. Aquino met today for the first time with Communist rebel leaders and proposed opening negotiations for a cease-fire on the island of Panay, Government officials said. The meeting was part of the Government’s effort to end the 17-year-old nationwide insurgency by the Communist New People’s Army. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Iloilo, Alberto Piamonte, said he had arranged the meeting at the Government’s request. The two sides issued a joint statement saying Mrs. Aquino and two regional Communist leaders were “open to the idea of a cease-fire” on the central Philippine island of Panay, 200 miles southeast of Manila. A Government spokesman, Teodoro C. Benigno, quoted the President as saying the next step would be for the rebels on the island and the Government to designate negotiating teams so the two sides could meet again “in the shortest possible time.”
The family of Eugene Hasenfus, the American flier captured in Nicaragua, announced today that they had retained former Attorney General Griffin B. Bell as his chief defense lawyer. Mr. Bell, who was Attorney General from 1977 to 1979 in the Carter Administration, is expected to leave for Nicaragua on Thursday. According to Nicaraguan law, defendants must be represented by Nicaraguan lawyers, so Mr. Bell’s precise role before the three-member revolutionary tribunal was uncertain.
Documents captured from a downed rebel plane here appear to show that the plane’s American co-pilot flew cargo planes to American military bases in the United States, Central America and the Caribbean until February of this year. One of the military bases, designated in a captured log by the airport code DRA, is in Mercury, Nevada, one of the most highly classified test sites for military aircraft and nuclear weapons. It is not clear why a rebel plane would fly to Mercury, Nevada, a base that may be used for research on the Stealth Bomber and “Star Wars,” or how a supposedly civilian crew on a plane believed leased to a private company in Miami, Southern Air Transport, could gain access to such a base. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Captain Jay Farrar, said he could not comment on the log book’s contents until he was able to see and analyze it. As a general rule, he said, privately owned aircraft are permitted to take off and land at United States Air Force bases only when under contract to the Government. The military, he said, routinely hires charter aircraft to move equipment and personnel. Southern Air Transport last year had more than $11 million in contracts with the Defense Department for such flights. He said in an interview that it was possible that the citations in the plane’s logs to takeoffs or landings at American air bases refer to contract operations.
Twenty-five Latin American nations stated tonight that they could not repay the region’s $370 billion foreign debt under present conditions and recommended indexing their debt payments to export earnings or other economic variables. A communique issued at the end of a two-day meeting of the Latin American Economic System called on creditor nations to increase their loans to the region, and on easier terms.
The South African authorities, apparently tightening again its recently relaxed policy on forced removal of blacks, announced the closing of a black township today and said the 10,000 residents would have to move to a new site 15 miles away. A protest group in the township, near Brits, north of Pretoria, said the Government action would be contested “even if it means violence.” “We are going to challenge Heunis all the way,” Sello Ramakobye of the Brits Action Committee said at a news conference, referring to Chris Heunis, the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning.
The 99th Congress, itching to leave the Capitol for home to campaign in the off-year elections, today approved and sent to the President the $576 billion comprehensive appropriations bill for 1987. The Republican-controlled Senate opened the way for adjournment, two weeks behind schedule, when it resolved a dispute over a new trainer jet for the Air Force and gave a second chance for a Long Island company to win the contract. But because Congress still has many minor bills it would like to approve, the House leadership said this evening that the House would have to come back Saturday to complete its work. The Administration’s budget director, James C. Miller 3d, said President Reagan would sign the full-year appropriations bill, allowing the Government, which was partially shut down today, to get back to normal. A Messy Winding Down The shutdown as well as deadlocks over the last few weeks on several major issues gave a messy and somewhat uncontrolled ending to a session marked by the approval of major legislation, including an overhaul of the tax system, economic sanctions on the Government of South Africa, revision of immigration law, and expansion of the nation’s program for toxic waste cleanup. The President signed the cleanup measure today.
A shutdown of some Government operations was short-lived as Congress passed the appropriations bill and kept the Government running. Employees scheduled to work over the weekend were told to report to their jobs. Others were told to report on Monday. At 9 o’clock this morning, nearly half a million “nonessential” Federal workers were given three hours to clear their desks, cancel their appointments and go home. After the directive was issued, Federal workers here and across the nation began to empty out of their offices and cubicles. By lunchtime, most were gone. Among the “nonessentials” who got an early start on the weekend were President Reagan’s household staff and gardeners on the White House grounds.
Congress today gave final approval to a landmark immigration bill as it moved toward adjournment. By a vote of 63 to 24, the Senate agreed to the compromise bill, clearing the measure for action by President Reagan. The bill would prohibit the hiring of illegal aliens and offer legal status, or amnesty, to millions of illegal aliens who have lived in this country continuously since before Jan. 1, 1982. The chief sponsor of the legislation, Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, said President Reagan “awaits this bill and has agreed to sign it.” Mr. Reagan proposed similar legislation in 1981 to tighten control of the borders and to curtail the influx of illegal aliens. The bill approved today, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, marks a historic change in American immigration policy. Under current law, illegal aliens may be deported, but it is generally not illegal for employers to hire them. Under the bill passed today, employers who hired illegal aliens would be subject to civil penalties ranging from $250 to $10,000 for each such alien.
Congress passed an anti-drug bill today after an unusual parliamentary compromise broke a month-long impasse between the two houses over the death penalty. By voice vote, the Senate gave final passage to a bill that did not contain a death penalty provision. That was one of two options the House gave the Senate when it approved the bill earlier today. With death penalty opponents promising a filibuster, the Senate chose not to act on the version of the bill that contained a death penalty provision, which would have applied to major drug dealers who committed murder.
President Reagan, expressing some reservations, today signed legislation providing $9 billion to continue cleaning up toxic wastes over the next five years. The President’s last-minute decision to sign the bill ended a protracted and sometimes bitter effort to renew the toxic waste law. It also rescued the national toxic cleanup effort, which was teetering on extinction because it had run out of money. In a statement issued on a campaign stop in Grand Forks, N.D., after he signed the measure into law, the President said he had been concerned about a broad-based tax on industry created to help pay for the cleanup program and also by the size of the cleanup fund. The Administration had recommended that no more than $5.3 billion be authorized for the toxic waste fund, usually called the superfund.
President Reagan participates in a political rally for Senator Mark Andrew’s campaign.
President Reagan meets with state heads of the Farm Bureau and Cattleman’s Association to discuss their recommendations for policy changes.
Congress approved and sent to President Reagan today a measure that would largely eliminate mandatory retirement at the age of 70. Mr. Reagan is expected to sign the bill, hailed by its sponsors as a major advance for the civil rights of older Americans. The House passed the bill by voice vote today. The Senate approved an identical measure late Thursday night.
An Air Force jet drew within 4.3 miles of Air Force One today, violating the Federal Aviation Administration’s five-mile separation limit, the agency’s chief spokesman said. The spokesman, Steven Hayes, said the incident occurred over western Pennsylvania when the pilot of an Air Force F-4 converging toward the Presidential plane twice failed to respond to an air traffic controller’s instructions to change course.
Tennessee officers using a helicopter and dogs hunted yesterday for the last of three inmates who escaped from a Kentucky jail, while two fugitives from Massachusetts were recaptured in New Orleans. Damon Lowe, a sheriff’s deputy in Henry County, Tennessee, said Mark Miller, a 22-year-old fugitive from Murray, Ky., was captured while hitchhiking early yesterday. Michael Wofford, 23, surrendered late Thursday after being seen along a road. Mr. Lowe said the authorities believed that Scotty Paul Sanderson, 22, also of Murray, was still in the area. The three escaped from the Calloway County Jail in Murray on Wednesday night. Mr. Wofford was recently convicted in a slaying last year; the others were being held on burglary, theft and armed robbery charges.
A pornography task force will be formed by the Justice Department. The task force, which will specialize in obscenity cases, is a follow-up to the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission today gave the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire a permit to load radioactive fuel and to conduct low-power tests that do not involve a chain reaction. The action was taken immediately after an appeals board of the agency rejected a request by the Attorney General of Massachusetts for a delay in the license approval. In denying a stay, the appeals panel cited a similar case in which the full commission granted a fuel-loading license to the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island in December 1984, despite opposition from local and state governments in New York. Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, who had opposed the Seabrook permit, denounced the decision today as “imprudent and unnecessary.” Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti of Massachusetts, said the state would appeal the panel’s decision against granting a delay to the full Nuclear Regulatory Commission and then, if necessary, to courts.
Dissent in the Catholic Church was discussed by two theologians in Los Angeles. Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and Charles E. Curran, a theologian censured by the Vatican for his views on sexual issues, participated in the discussion which drew 1,500 people.
The largest cache of crack ever seized in New York was discovered by the police and Federal agents in a raid on three apartments in the Bronx Thursday night, officials said. The find was seen as evidence of the growing sophistication of crack producers in the metropolitan region. The seizure of 16 pounds of the potent, smokeable form of cocaine, 17,000 vials for packaging the drug and nearly seven pounds of cocaine powder indicated that crack no longer was being produced only by individuals or relatively small drug sales organizations, according to Robert M. Stutman, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the New York region.
The University of North Carolina inaugurated a new president for the first time in 30 years. The investiture of C. D. Spangler Jr. was more splashed with ceremony than the last inauguration, in 1956.
A prominent Michigan Republican pleads guilty to two counts of defrauding the United States Postal Service. John Gnau, the Michigan chairman of Mr. Reagan’s 1980 Presidential campaign, pleaded guilty in a year-old inquiry.
A divided Illinois Supreme Court today blocked a couple’s attempt to sue a doctor for “wrongful life” over the birth of their fatally stricken child. The case stemmed from the 1978 birth of Jeffrey Goldberg, who was stricken with Tay-Sachs disease, a fatal, hereditary disorder of the nervous system. The parents, Michael and Nancy Goldberg, claimed their doctor negligently failed to perform tests that would have showed that they were carriers of the disease or that their child was afflicted. Lawyers for the parents filed a lawsuit that, in part, sought to collect damages for their son’s pain and suffering after birth, a “wrongful life” action. The high court, with two Justices dissenting, said the central issue was whether “the child would have been better off not being born at all,” a question the court said was “outside the competence of the legal system.”
A secondary flood crest on the Missouri River passed through St. Charles today, causing little additional damage to residences inundated in last week’s record flooding. “As far as the worst of it, it’s over with,” said Sgt. Pete Bishop of the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s deputies no longer were patrolling several trailer parks in the county, Sergeant Bishop said, but an officer remained on duty in Portage des Sioux and West Alton. The National Weather Service said the Missouri crested at St. Charles at 30.6 feet early today, well under the record 37.8 feet last week. Flood stage at St. Charles, 15 miles northwest of St. Louis, is 25 feet.
Earthquake insurance rates have risen in Los Angeles. Property owners are relying on construction engineering and on luck for protection from the powerful earthquake that experts say is likely within the next few decades.
After a week of suspense and months of political cajoling and arm-twisting, Barcelona, Spain, won the right to be host to the 1992 Summer Olympic Games and Albertville, France, was designated the site of the Winter Games in the same year. The decisions were made in secret-ballot voting today by 85 of International Olympic Committee’s 89 members. The winners were announced by Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the I.O.C., who did not vote because he comes from Barcelona.
After four consecutive days of gains, Wall Street suffered a mild setback yesterday, as the broad market fell gently in an uneventful, lower-volume session. The decline was no more exciting than three of the four recent gains. Only Wednesday’s 31-point rise in the Dow Jones industrial average, on heavy volume, has interrupted Wall Street’s recent slumber. Mainly because of Wednesday’s action, the Dow, which was up 0.85, to 1,837.04 yesterday, finished the week with a 43.87-point gain. That was the best improvement since the blue-chip indicator rose 72.98 points in the week that ended August 15.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1837.04 (+0.85)
Born:
Simon Harris, Irish politician and Taoiseach (2024-), in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland.
Dan Butler, MLB catcher (Boston Red Sox), in Phoenix, Arizona.
Jeremy Duchesne, NHL goaltender (Philadelphia Flyers), in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Marcedes Walker, WNBA center (Houston Comets), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
