News stories from Sunday September 4, 1977

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

The draft of a "Declaration of Washington" is being circulated in Washington by the Carter administration in hopes that Latin American leaders will sign it as an expression of support for the Panama Canal treaties, which are to be signed Wednesday. Administration officials said the declaration would not commit Latin American countries to outright support of the treaties or to guaranteeing the permanent neutrality of the Panama Canal, but it might ease the treaty ratification process in this country and Panama. [New York Times] Documentary evidence exists, congressional investigators say, that Henry Kissinger was aware of South Korea's alleged influence buying in Washington as early as 1972, when he was national security adviser to President Nixon. There is also evidence, according to the investigators, that Gen. Alexander Haig, then Mr. Kissinger's deputy and later chief of the White House staff, also knew about the covert Korean operation. The investigators said they doubted that President Nixon knew about Seoul's efforts. [New York Times] Experiments by American intelligence agents on ways to control the mind focused as long ago as 1943 on ways to induce people to tell the truth against their will, according to documents in a small college museum in California. The records, recently discovered by Senate investigators, were the personal papers of a one-time military intelligence officer, now dead. [New York Times] The expense account lunch tax deductibility is among the fringe benefits that may be altered downward in the tax reform plan that President Carter is expected to deliver to Congress later this month. The President wants to put a dollar ceiling on its deductibility. Expense account privileges are under their biggest attack since the Kennedy administration, but White House tax policy advisers are examining almost every tax deduction, exclusion or special credit that now exists to determine whether the preferences are still justified. The special advantages include the deduction of home mortgage interest and claims of an additional exemption for persons over 65. [New York Times] A gang-related shooting was apparently the motive of an attack by three masked gunmen on a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown in which five persons were killed and 10 others wounded. About 100 persons were in the restaurant, the Golden Dragon. Witnesses said the attack took less than a minute. All the dead were Chinese. [New York Times] The Arab League agreed to urge the General Assembly of the United Nations to condemn Israel's settlement policy on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. The Arab foreign ministers, meeting in Cairo, rejected Syria's proposal that a campaign be launched to suspend Israel from the United Nations and adopted the more moderate Egyptian position. The question of Israel's expansion on the West Bank -- termed this "flagrant Israeli challenge" by Prince Saud, the Saudi Foreign Minister -- gave a sense of urgency to what was a routine meeting. [New York Times] Spain is seeking membership in the European Common Market, along with Greece and Portugal and probably Turkey later on, but the richer member countries of northern Europe are of two minds about letting them in. To do so would mean serious economic problems for the present members, while to exclude them would brand the Economic Community as a selfish rich man's club. [New York Times] Zulfikar All Bhutto's arrest will not prevent his political organization, the Pakistan People's Party, from participating in next month's parliamentary elections, the party leaders said. Other Pakistanis and diplomats in Lahore were not so sure. They believe that the party's prospects have been dimmed by former Prime Minister Bhutto's arrest on a charge of having conspired in the attempted murder of a political opponent in 1974. The case was reopened this summer after the military coup that forced Mr. Bhutto from office. [New York Times] The Coca-Cola Company is still trying to maintain its operations in India, but the Industries Minister, George Fernandes, said he was having no second thought on the question of Coca-Cola's staying in the country. Coca-Cola was told last month to transfer 60 percent of the shares of its Indian company to Indian shareholders along with its formula for the soft drink or get out of the country. Coca-Cola said it was willing to transfer the shares, but not the concentrate formula, which it says is a trade secret. [New York Times]