President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed on arms control “priorities” today that pointedly omitted any mention of the American proposal to the Soviet Union that would abolish all ballistic missiles in 10 years. In a news conference at the British Embassy after talking with Mr. Reagan at Camp David, Maryland, Mrs. Thatcher read a statement that set out future arms-control priorities. The statement was clearly meant to ease allied concerns that the United States was rushing too quickly into far-reaching bans on nuclear forces. Mr. Reagan concurred with Mrs. Thatcher that the priorities in negotiations with the Soviet Union should be on seeking a 50 percent cut in strategic nuclear forces and on a sharp reduction on medium-range missiles over five years, she said. And the two leaders agreed, she said, that cuts in nuclear weapons should be accompanied by steps toward eliminating Soviet advantage in nonnuclear forces.
The priorities were set out in a way that made it clear that the United States would not press for either the banning of all ballistic missiles over a 10-year period, which was proposed by Mr. Reagan in his talks last month with Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Iceland, or for an elimination of all offensive strategic forces, as sought by Mr. Gorbachev, and agreed to as a goal by Mr. Reagan. Mrs. Thatcher had indicated before coming to Washington that her primary goal was to seek to persuade Mr. Reagan to temper his enthusiasm, which he demonstrated in his talks in Reykjavik, for far-reaching cuts in nuclear forces. The Europeans have based their security since the end of World War II on a nuclear shield to offset the large disparity in Soviet bloc and allied ground forces. The British and other Europeans were concerned, after the Reykjavik meeting, even about Mr. Reagan’s proposal for a ban on all ballistic missiles in 10 years. If the United States and Soviet Union agreed on this, they said, it could cause problems for Europe if the reductions were not matched by breakthroughs in other areas. The areas would include chemical weapons, verification and the size of each side’s conventional forces.
The Soviet Union has ratified two international conventions on nuclear accidents, but said it would not be bound by a provision allowing a government to take a dispute to arbitration or to the International Court of Justice. The reservation evidently reflected unsettled disputes over compensation arising from the accident last April at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine that showered radiation over much of Eastern and Western Europe. The two conventions, which were prompted by the Chernobyl disaster, were signed by 50 governments at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on September 26.
The Chernobyl nuclear reactor that exploded last spring and spread radiation across Europe has been enclosed in a 200-foot-tall concrete case, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said. “The stricken reactor of Unit No. 4. . . has been securely isolated, entombed for centuries in reinforced concrete,” it said. Pravda said the structure has ventilation shafts containing equipment to monitor radiation levels and filters capable of trapping radioactive dust. The April 26 disaster killed 31 people and forced the evacuation of more than 100,000.
John Davis, the charge d’affaires at the United States Embassy, has dedicated a monument to American boxers who were killed in a plane crash here six and a half years ago. Mr. Davis said that the inscription on the statue of a supine boxer, “Down But Not Out,” also characterized the state of United States-Polish relations. Two months after Poland freed all political prisoners, the United States has responded with expressions of interest and approval, but no dramatic gestures such as the lifting of sanctions. Instead, Poland has been told that the United States is prepared to make more subtle gestures, with possible exchanges of visitors and a removal of trade restrictions.
Threats from Protestant extremists in Northern Ireland to plant bombs in the Irish Republic discouraged shopping in Dublin yesterday on the one-year anniversary of the signing of a treaty with Britain. This day was a mere anniversary amid all the centuries of lethal Irish conflict, but it was marked in two starkly different ways. For the majority, there was a triumphal mass rally here outside the City Hall. It was an impressive statement of furious opposition to the year-old attempt by Britain and the Irish Republic to pacify and change the politics of this violence-prone province. For the minority, there was another desperate huddling in the nearby suburb of Lisburn. This time, it was a young mother and two children from the Whitby family, fire-bombed in their home for the second time, and the Taggart family, fire-bombed a third time.
Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s discomfiture over the setback suffered by his Socialist Party in municipal elections last month appears to non-American diplomats here to have heightened his Government’s ambiguity over relations with Washington. In statements addressed to an American public, the Papandreou Government says relations are good and getting better. At the same time, however, Greek and diplomatic commentators here say that in actions, words and gestures the Government seems to be trying to appease the strongly anti-American left within the governing party and the pro-Soviet Communists by distancing Greece from American policies.
A Jewish student was stabbed to death today near the seminary he attended in the Old City of Jerusalem, and three Arab suspects were arrested, the police said. The police arrested the suspects near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, not far from the Birkat Avraham seminary, where the 22-year-old victim was a student, the spokesman said. The assault today was one of a series of recent stabbing incidents involving Israelis. Two Israeli taxi drivers were fatally stabbed while having their cars repaired in the occupied Gaza Strip in incidents on September 27 and October 7.
Islamic Holy War, a pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim group, urged the United States today to take unspecified “wider steps” to gain the freedom of hostages it is holding. The group freed David P. Jacobsen nearly two weeks ago, and it says it is still holding American and other Western hostages, Islamic Holy War said it would not move “a fraction of a fingertip” to release the remaining hostages unless its demands were met. The statement said Mr. Jacobsen’s release had been the “result of certain overtures that, if continued, will solve the issue of the hostages.” It also said that “the American Government should assume a bigger role” and offer “a more advanced step to meet our demands and solve the hostages’ problem.”
With the White House facing criticism of its Iran policy and its handling of foreign affairs, two of President Reagan’s advisers have mounted a strong defense of their competence and the role they have been playing. One adviser, Donald T. Regan, who is the White House chief of staff and a principal subject of the growing criticism from some both inside and outside the White House, said: “I don’t take kindly to this criticism by people who have not examined my record. How much more experience do you have to have in foreign policy than I do to believe you are qualified?” His comments in his White House office on Friday came at the conclusion of a day in which he and Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, the national security adviser, began a series of interviews and television appearances to last through the weekend.
NATO legislators reacted with shock, sorrow and anger today to disclosures that the United States had secretly sent arms to Iran, and they urged the allies to take a tough stand against terrorism. “We feel horror and disgust,” Kevin McNamara, a British Labor Party member, said in an interview. “I am in the opposition, but most of our delegation here feels that Reagan has really let Margaret Thatcher down.” Earl de la Warr, a British Conservative, echoing his colleague’s sentiment, said, “It has really hurt American credibility in the fight against terrorism.”
Iraq denounced President Reagan today for secretly supplying arms to Iran, its enemy in the Persian Gulf war. “Iraq strongly condemns the American Administration’s supply of military equipment to Iran, whatever their quantity or nature might be,” the Iraqi press agency quoted an official spokesman as saying.
Iran launched a missile attack on a cargo vessel in the southern Persian Gulf today as a fire raged on one of its offshore oil platforms, a day after a long-range strike by Iraqi jets. Shipping sources said an Iranian gunboat fired a missile into the engine room of the 8,586-ton cement carrier Shaam near Abu Nuayr Island, 60 miles west of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Land Rover Ltd. confirmed that it is negotiating a $38-million deal with a buyer in Iran but denied British press reports that it is a secret deal to provide vehicles to Tehran. The Sunday Mail reported that the British firm is negotiating the deal to provide vehicles to Tehran for use in its war with Iraq. The newspaper said the deal for 3,000 Land Rovers is being arranged through the London office of an unidentified Middle East arms dealer.
Two earthquakes shook Taiwan and killed at least 14 people under collapsed buildings and rock slides yesterday, the police said. The first and stronger quake measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. Twenty people were believed buried alive after a three-story building collapsed in the Taipei suburb of Chungho, the radio quoted residents as having said. More than 200 rescuers, using bulldozers and dogs, searched for survivors.
The branch director of a Japanese concern, one of the largest companies doing business in the Philippines, was kidnapped today by armed men outside a country club south of Manila, the police said. The businessman, Nobuyuki Wakaoji, 53 years old, the representative of the Mitsui Bussan trading company, was seized at 3:30 PM by five or six armed men driving two cars, according to a security guard at the Canlubang country club 30 miles south of the city. The identity of the kidnappers was not known. There was no immediate word of any communication from them.
Separatists and pro-French militants in New Caledonia clashed in the coastal town of Thio, and police said a 14-year-old boy was killed and 12 people injured. The fighting broke out after 200 pro-French loyalists held a rally. New Caledonia’s population of about 145,000 is divided between the Kanak, or Melanesian, separatists and loyalists of European and Asian ancestry who favor continued French control of the South Pacific island.
More than half of all Mexicans believe that Mexico’s economic troubles are so profound that the country will never recover, a New York Times Poll has found. A portrait of the Mexican people’s deep pessimism about their country’s economic plight emerges from the poll, conducted October 28 to November 4. It reveals a nation lacking confidence about its future, longing for political change, deeply suspicious of the Government’s motives and questioning its leaders’ ability to manage the country’s affairs. Esteem for the President At the same time, Mexicans are not blaming their President, Miguel de la Madrid. Half of those polled said he was doing a good job, a finding that some Mexican scholars interpret as a reflection of the authoritarian nature of the country’s political system.
Cuba has agreed to pay $40 million compensation to 3,000 Spaniards whose property in Cuba was nationalized in the 1960s, Spain’s foreign minister said in Havana. Francisco Fernandez Ordonez gave no details of the agreement. He said that Spain would pay the claimants and then give Cuba 15 years to repay. Cuba’s payment would be both in hard currency and in exported products, including tobacco, he said. The compensation accord was worked out while Cuban President Fidel Castro and Spanish Premier Felipe Gonzalez have been holding secret talks at an undisclosed location in Cuba.
Hundreds of Haitian factory workers have been dismissed from their jobs in an attempt to crush fledgling labor unions that have been trying to organize since the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship nine months ago. Scores of other workers in Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere have been threatened with dismissal or have been suspended or reassigned as punishment for union activity, according to Government officials, labor leaders and foreign diplomats. Some of the dozens of small factories here, most of which operate under contract to American companies to produce such things as electronic equipment, sporting goods and clothing, have threatened to close rather than deal with unions. Government officials say that at least five shut down shortly after unions were organized.
Eugene Hasenfus, the American air-cargo specialist whose arms-laden plane was shot down over Nicaragua October 5, was convicted today and sentenced to 30 years in jail by a Nicaraguan tribunal. Mr. Hasenfus, 45 years old, had admitted being part of a clandestine operation delivering weapons to anti-Government forces in Nicaragua. In the verdict today, a People’s Tribunal said such weapons “have been used to kill peasants and other Nicaraguan citizens.” The tribunal ordered the 30-year term after declaring Mr. Hasenfus guilty of violating a public security law that bans “actions aimed at subjecting the nation totally or partially to foreign domination, or infringing on its independence or integrity.”
American soldiers in Honduras have been restricted from patronizing nightclubs in the capital, Tegucigalpa, because of fears of attacks by leftist guerrillas who infiltrated from Nicaragua, Honduran military officers said. A U.S. Embassy spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the report. The U.S. military has stationed about 1,000 soldiers in Honduras on a rotating basis since 1983.
The last contingent of U.S. soldiers sent to Bolivia last July to help in a crackdown on cocaine trafficking left the country. A group of 52 Americans and three Black Hawk helicopters were flown to Panama, marking the end of the withdrawal that began three weeks ago. The soldiers provided logistical support to Bolivian drug agents in raiding cocaine-processing laboratories in the tropical northern Beni region. U.S. officials said the crackdown would continue, with U.S.-trained Bolivians.
In a key stage of Brazil’s gradual transition from military dictatorship to full democracy, more than 60 million Brazilians voted today to choose a new Congress that is to pave the way for the first direct presidential elections since 1960. Civilian Government was restored here 18 months ago after 21 years of military rule. But President Jose Sarney was chosen indirectly by an electoral college, and many of the decrees and laws imposed by the ruling generals are still in effect. In March of next year, however, the Congress chosen today is to begin drawing up a new constitution, Brazil’s eighth in 164 years of independence. The new charter is expected not only to give the country a new set of political rules but also to call for direct presidential elections for some time between 1988 and 1990.
General Samuel K. Doe, the Liberian President, “has sanctioned an undercurrent of lawlessness and random brutality” by the military since he took power in 1980, a New York-based human rights group said last week. On the anniversary of an unsuccessful coup attempt last November 12, the group, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, issued a 175-page report that described hundreds of instances of summary executions by soldiers as well as abuses involving arson, looting, rape and dismemberment of bodies of slain rebels. The report also quoted several people who said they witnessed acts of cannibalism. The accounts said Government soldiers ate the bodies of the leaders of the unsuccessful coup attempt.
The Kampala radio said today that Ugandan rebels had mounted a series of attacks against Government troops in northern Uganda but suffered heavy casualties. The radio quoted a senior army officer as saying 500 rebels engaged units of the Government’s National Resistance Army near the northern Ugandan town of Kitgum. Salim Saleh, in charge of the National Resistance Army’s northern brigade, was quoted as saying 20 rebels and 5 Government troops were killed in the fighting. The rebels are believed to have been soldiers under the previous Government, which was led by Major General Tito Okello.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist rejected South African Airways’ request to stay a U.S. order halting its service to the United States. The order, effective today, was issued by the Department of Transportation, implementing anti-apartheid sanctions imposed by Congress last month. South African Airways contended that a bilateral aviation agreement between the two countries requires a one-year notice before termination of operating rights. A Supreme Court spokeswoman said Rehnquist acted in his role as circuit judge for the District of Columbia.
The 100th Congress, with a leavening of conservation-minded freshmen in the Senate’s new Democratic majority, is expected to aggressively pursue a broad environmental agenda. The new Congress is likely to pick up quickly the unfinished work of the recently ended session, starting with the Clean Water Act, which President Reagan nullified with a pocket veto two days after last week’s national election. Key legislators, clearly spoiling for a fight with the White House after the veto, said they would seek to make the water bill the first order of business after Congress returns in January. Lawmakers and environmentalists interviewed recently said that they expected efforts to amend the Clean Air Act, including controls on pollution that causes acid rain, to be high on the agenda of the next Congress, despite the Reagan Administration’s continued insistence that more study is needed before undertaking an expensive new regulatory program.
Members of Congress said today that they were preparing to confront the White House and demand that President Reagan’s foreign policy advisers explain their dealings with Iran. Several House and Senate members said they would challenge the Administration if it tried to prevent members of the National Security Council staff from testifying before the relevant committees. The Administration has previously rebuffed such requests, citing “executive privilege,” the President’s right to keep dealings with his personal staff private. “The bottom line is they can’t avoid oversight,” said Representative Dave McCurdy, Democrat of Oklahoma, who is on the House Intelligence Committee. “When the National Security Council staff steps outside its role of being an adviser and becomes an executor of foreign policy and the transferer of arms, clearly they fall into our jurisdiction.”
President Reagan makes a radio address to the Nation on bipartisan consensus in Congress.
Vice President George Bush continues to hold a big lead for the Republican nomination for the 1988 presidential race, with 57% of Republicans’ and GOP-leaning independents’ combined first- and second-place nomination votes, according to a Gallup Poll. Runners-up in the new survey were Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, with 20%, former Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, with 14%, and Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, with 12%. Bush has been the choice of the majority of potential GOP voters in each of five Gallup nomination tests held this year and in 1985.
A White House policy team, under a mandate from President Reagan to devise “real and lasting” improvements in the nation’s welfare system, has stopped short of recommending fundamental changes, according to many people familiar with the proposals. Instead, Administration officials and outside experts said, the team is proposing that a few selected communities be permitted to use existing welfare funds to finance experimental programs. Some of the experiments would be directed by state officials and others by the Federal Government. For example, New Jersey officials have suggested involving welfare recipients in housing renovation. And North Carolina would like to use a “social contract” that promises rewards to those on welfare if they make progress toward specific goals, such as graduating from high school or enrolling in a job training program.
A top Justice Department official today denounced what he called liberal media and elite law schools as propagating an “overblown myth” that courts should engage in “liberal social reform” in the name of constitutional interpretation. The official, Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, asserted that the “elites who advocate and celebrate judicial supremacy,” viewed the Constitution only as “what can be found in the most recent collection of Supreme Court opinions that further their liberal agenda.” His remarks were in a speech prepared for delivery in Chicago tonight to the Federalist Society, a national group of conservative law students and lawyers. A fervent conservative, Mr. Reynolds heads the department’s civil rights division and is one of the most trusted aides to Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d.
For the first time since the Challenger explosion, astronauts I will climb aboard the space shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday for launching tests that will include emergency escape drills. The escape tests, in which astronauts will pretend to be injured after a simulated pre-launch emergency, are the most extensive ever carried out in the shuttle program since the Challenger disaster last January.
The announcement on Friday that Ivan F. Boesky, Wall Street’s largest and best known speculator in takeover stocks, had admitted to illegally profiting from inside information could make it more difficult for financial entrepreneurs to take over voting control of major corporations. A number of senior executives in the securities industry said there might be fewer takeovers forced by powerful speculators, or arbitragers, as well as less rampant speculation on which company would be the next target of a corporate raider. There was also widespread concern that the size of the excesses exposed could outrage the public and Congress so much that restrictive new legislation might be imposed, although key members of Congress seemed to be taking a wait-and-see approach. Mr. Boesky, chief executive of the investment firm Ivan F. Boesky & Company, was charged with making, in just one year, more than $50 million in profits through the illegal use of company information not available to the public. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday that Mr. Boesky had agreed to pay that profit to the Government, plus a $50 million penalty.
Thousands of weary marchers and joyous supporters joined today in singing the folk anthem “This Land Is Your Land” to end the eight-month, 3,600-mile Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. The marchers, completing their coast-to-coast march against nuclear weapons, walked down 16th Street under cloudy skies to Lafayette Square, the park across the street from the White House. The police estimated the size of the cheering, singing crowd at 15,000 people, about 1,000 of them members of the journey that started March 1 in Los Angeles. Organizers said 400 people made the complete march, which was forced by financial problems to regroup and reorganize in the California desert before setting out again on March 28.
Beech-Nut Nutrition Inc. and two of its executives pleaded not guilty in New York to charges stemming from sales of flavored sugar water as 100% apple juice for babies. The 470-count indictment charges that Beech-Nut and its president, Niels L. Hoyvald, and. vice president, John F. Lavery, knowingly sold the phony juice from 1978 to 1983. Suppliers Zeev Kaplansky, former president of Universal Juice Inc., Nina Williamson, former officer of Food Complex Inc., and Danny Shaeffer, an employee of Nameco Trading, also pleaded not guilty. The defendants were released on their own recognizance. Another supplier, Raymond H. Wells, pleaded not guilty earlier.
Hunger striker Gino Casanova has ended a 51-day fast he endured to draw attention to soldiers missing in action and rumors of U.S. prisoners held in Vietnam, a friend said. Casanova, a veteran, refused a medical exam and has flown home from Washington to Washington state, the friend said. Casanova’s hunger strike lasted as long as his 1985 fast in Kent, Wash., also over the MIA issue. He staged the second fast in a cage near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. His friend said Casanova ended the fast after receiving calls from dignitaries and people concerned about missing servicemen in Vietnam.
The Coast Guard, operating from a Navy frigate, sank a Colombian fishing boat carrying 10 tons of marijuana when it ignored orders to stop, officials said. One crew member aboard the fishing vessel was injured in the incident, which occurred in international waters, about 40 miles north of Colombia. Six others were seized by the Coast Guard pending arraignment. Officials said that they found the marijuana on the ship and took a number of bales for use as evidence.
Half a year after dropping regular sanitary inspections of cruise ships, a Federal health agency has announced that the inspections will resume January 1. The restored program, however, will include a concession to the cruise industry. And for the first time inspection results will be reported by numerical score instead of just a “yes” or “no” checkoff on whether it met Federal standards. The reinstatement of the inspection program by the Centers for Disease Control was ordered last month by Congress, which called the stoppage “an unwise decision.”
The Mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, may soon receive a transplanted heart. John E. Reardon has been told by his doctor that he is “a high-risk candidate for sudden death” if he does not receive the transplant.
A man who hijacked a helicopter 10 days ago and flew to a Federal prison where he picked up a female inmate was captured today along with the woman, Federal officials said. The arrest was made in a jewelry store as the couple tried to pick up a wedding ring for him. The couple, Ronald J. McIntosh, 43 years old, and Samantha Dorinda Lopez, 37, were arrested without incident, said Stanley E. Morris, director of the United States Marshal Service here.
A U.S. order to deport an author because of her political writing has stirred a group of prominent American authors to action and has intensified debate over the country’s immigration law. The writer, Margaret J. Randall, who teaches at the University of New Mexico, was born in New York but gave up her American citizenship in the 1960’s. Her request for permanent resident status was turned down by an immigration officer in 1985, and in August an immigration service judge in El Paso upheld that decision. Ms. Randall, who is 50 years old, is now appealing to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington. She can remain in this country through that appeal and any court appeal she may make thereafter.
A plan for specialized academic programs in Kansas City public schools, ordered by a Federal judge, will create one of the nation’s most far-reaching and expensive programs to desegregate schools by attracting students to ones that are now segregated, educators say. As part of the plan, which is meant to draw white students in suburbs to city schools, all 17 of the Kansas City School District’s secondary schools and half of its 50 elementary schools will offer specialized programs in subjects such as foreign languages, the performing arts and military science. District officials say this “magnet” school policy will also create racially balanced schools. William Taylor, a civil rights lawyer in Washington, D.C., praised the plan to include all the secondary schools, saying it would keep Kansas City from developing a “two-tiered system” of elite magnet schools and regular schools.
Many parents are pushing their very young children too hard to perform academically, and that is causing increased problems of stress and depression among the children, two prominent experts warned here Friday. The experts, speaking at a news conference at the annual meeting of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, said this undue parental pressure was also threatening children’s zest for learning.
Cold Canadian air kept temperatures in the teens over the northern Plains, but the “Siberian Express” cold wave that broke temperature records and claimed at least 27 lives in 14 states since November 7 blew out to sea. Temperatures rose into the 40s along the East Coast after dropping into the teens two days earlier. “It’s getting warmer, but cloudy skies and rain are keeping temperatures from going any higher,” said Paul Fike, National Weather Service meteorologist. Rain was scattered from southern New Jersey across eastern Virginia to eastern North Carolina.
“Saturday Night Live” uses a time delay for the second time when Sam Kinison hosts.
Beastie Boys release their debut album “Licensed to Ill,” the first rap album to reach #1 on the Billboard charts.
Golfer Byron Nelson (74) weds advertising copy writer Peggy Simmons (42).
Born:
Winston Duke, Tobagonian actor (“Black Panther” films; “Us”), in Argyle, Tobago.
Devin Thomas, NFL wide receiver (Washington Redskins, Carolina Panthers, New York Giants), in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Coye Francies, NFL cornerback (Cleveland Browns, Oakland Raiders), in Bakersfield, California.
Sania Mirza, Indian tennis player, in Mumbai, India.
Died:
John E. Grotberg, 61, American politician (Rep-R-Illinois, 1985-1986), of cancer in office.
