Replay giovedì 15 agosto 1985

NEWS SUMMARY: FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1985

Date: 16 August 1985

International South Africa's President rejected foreign and domestic calls for major concessions to the black majority. He also said that he would not soften his terms for the release of Nelson Mandela, the jailed black leader. President P. W. Botha, in defiant and sometimes belligerent tones, told a provincial congress of the governing National Party in Durban that he was ''not prepared to lead white South Africans and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide.'' [Page A1, Column 6.] Responding to P. W. Botha's remarks, the Reagan Administration said that the South African President had made ''an important statement'' with steps that it hoped would ''advance the end of apartheid.'' In a statement approved by President Reagan, Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, said the Administration hoped for ''early implementation'' of policy changes outlined by Mr. Botha. [A7:4-6.]

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NEWS SUMMARY: THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1985

Date: 15 August 1985

International Morocco will soon finish building a wall of sand and electronic sensors that is greatly revolutionizing antiguerilla tactics, according to senior Moroccan military officers. The wall, which was started five years ago, will stretch for more than 1,560 miles across the Sahara. The wall is expected to help Rabat in its nine-year-old war against Polisario Front rebels. [Page A1, Columns 3-4.] South African violence claimed three more lives in townships. The incidents took place amid expectations that President P. W. Botha will make a major policy statement on apartheid. The three deaths brought the death toll in the last 11 months to at least 618. [A6:1-3.]

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Nicaraguan Rebel Fails In Bid to Head Group

Date: 16 August 1985

Special to The New York Times

The Miskito rebel leader Steadman Fagoth was forced to flee into Honduras from a rebel-held area in Nicaragua after he was unable to force the directors of the Misura Indian rebel organization to rename him as head of the group, a rebel spokesman said today. The Misura spokesman, Adan Artola, spoke in a telephone interview from Honduras.

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An Economic Scoop

Date: 16 August 1985

By Irvin Molotsky and Warren Weaver Jr

Irvin Molotsky

Scoops on the Government's economic indicators are unusual, largely because tight security envelops such announcements to avoid unruly reactions on the stock and bond markets. But the rare event occurred yesterday when the Federal Reserve Board put out its monthly report on industrial production for July.

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Accountability for All

Date: 15 August 1985

To the Editor: How ironic that those who have made significant contributions to expanding the scope of the First Amendment should so narrowly construe the meaning of the Zenger verdict, as Floyd Abrams did in his Aug. 5 Op-Ed article, ''After 250 Years, Zenger's Editorial Victory Lives On.'' When Andrew Hamilton stirred the jury to acquit his client and thereby to ignore the court's instruction -which, as then rendered, required a guilty verdict - his appeal was doubtless based less on the novel concept of a free press than on the notion that every institution, even the royal Governor, had to be accountable for its deeds. The jury recognized that there could be no accountability if it was a crime to expose those deeds, as Zenger had done.

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U.S. SEEKING TO DETERMINE IF SPY HAD GREATER ROLE THAN THOUGHT

Date: 15 August 1985

By Stephen Engelberg

Stephen Engelberg

Although Arthur J. Walker has been found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union, Federal officials say they are continuing to investigate whether his espionage activities were more widespread than he has acknowledged. Officials said they were pursuing leads relating to Mr. Walker in an effort to assemble further details about a purported espionage ring, which they said involved two other members of the Walker family and a retired Navy enlisted man. All the others have pleaded not guilty. The officials acknowledged that it was highly unusual for the Government to continue such an extensive background investigation on a defendant after his conviction. But the suspicion based on circumstantial evidence that Mr. Walker might have compromised Navy secrets in his military career has made it important to continue the inquiry, they said.

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GORBACHEV OFFER IS DISPUTED BY U.S.

Date: 15 August 1985

By Gerald M. Boyd, Special To the New York Times

Gerald

The Reagan Administration, responding to a halt in nuclear testing by the Soviet Union, insisted today that the moratorium was being imposed at a time of Soviet nuclear advantage. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, was reacting to an assertion by Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Tuesday that Moscow had not completed its latest test series, as the United States contends, but had interrupted testing to announce its moratorium. The Soviet halt is to last until the end of the year, subject to indefinite extension if the United States were to join in.

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SUSPECT IN SPY CASE FACED 'BREAKDOWN,' PSYCHIATRIC DATA SAY

Date: 16 August 1985

Special to the New York Times

Two years before Richard W. Miller was arrested on espionage charges, he was in danger of a ''real breakdown,'' his former supervisor in the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified today. A psychiatrist who examined Mr. Miller in 1982 warned of a possible breakdown in part because of Mr. Miller's inability to cope with the problem of his weight, said Gary Auer, who was Mr. Miller's supervisor on the bureau's foreign counterintelligence squad. The psychiatrist also warned that it ''might not be prudent to believe Mr. Miller could be made into a successful F.B.I. agent,'' Mr. Auer said.

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U.S. AIDE AND JORDAN IN TALKS

Date: 15 August 1985

AP

A United States official discussed a Middle East peace plan today with King Hussein and top Jordanian officials, the Jordanian press agency said. The agency said the Jordanians had insisted on peace talks that would include the Palestine Liberation Organization.

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WEINBERGER BACKS NEW BUTING RULES

Date: 16 August 1985

By Bill Keller, Special To the New York Times

Bill Keller

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger told a Presidential commission today that he would support changes in the way the Pentagon bought weapons so as to restore what he described as sagging public confidence in the military. According to officials who attended the closed meeting of the President's Commission on Defense Management, the Defense Secretary advocated stricter review of new weapons before they were approved for full-scale development and tighter limits on military specifications that made weapons more complex and expensive. Members of Congress and the Pentagon's own auditors have said the military services push new weapons into production without insisting on proof they are needed. New Budget Idea Backed Mr. Weinberger also endorsed a proposal, contained in a bill on military programs that is pending in Congress, to begin writing each year a military budget covering the next two years. Advocates say this practice would allow Congress to focus less on relatively small points and more on broader strategy and policy questions.

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The Unheroic Truth About John Peter Zenger

Date: 15 August 1985

To the Editor: In your editorial salute to John Peter Zenger's jury (Aug. 4) you perpetuate myths about this case that no amount of scholarship seems able to dispel and add some inaccuracies. Zenger may be an American folk hero, but his reputation is not deserved. To begin, he was an uneducated man and indifferent printer, who was first apprenticed to William Bradford in Philadelphia, not New York. By ironic coincidence, Bradford offended the Quaker authorities by questioning their honesty and was brought to court on the same kind of libel accusation Zenger would later be charged with. Defending himself on much the same grounds, he escaped by virtue of a hung jury but lost his official printing contract, his type and his paper, and came to New York, bringing Zenger with him. There the New York Gazette, which he started, became the official government paper.

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