News stories from Saturday January 5, 1980
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Additional measures against Moscow were under review, administration officials said, and the punitive sanctions announced Friday night by President Carter "should not be considered the final word." They said at a news conference that there are about 50,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. "We are now in a very early period of the response of the United States and a number of other nations in the international community to the aggression which the Soviet Union has carried out in a singularly brutal fashion," a State Department official said.
Moscow accused President Carter of a "flagrant violation" of American commitments to the Soviet Union and of reviving cold war measures. American farmers were guaranteed by Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland that they would not lose money because of the cutback in grain shipments to the Soviet Union. He said the administration would immediately use existing authority to take steps to insure that there would be no decline in the prices farmers are now receiving for corn, wheat and soybeans.
[New York Times] - Pakistan and Egypt condemned the Soviet Union's "massive" intervention in Afghanistan as the Security Council of the United Nations started a debate on the issue. Moscow, in turn, retorted that its troops had moved only to protect Afdghanistan from "counter-revolutionaries" armed by the United States and China. Pakistan demanded an "immediate and unconditional withdrawal" of the troops. [New York Times]
- A reduction in unemployment benefits ordered by President Carter and being carried out by Labor Secretary Ray Marshall is expected cut payments to long-term unemployed people by hundreds of millions of dollars this year and next. Mr. Marshall opposed the reduction, which the White House said will provide more money for housing, a major item in the budget that will soon be submitted to Congress. [New York Times]
- Six Republican presidential candidates bid for support in Iowa's precinct caucuses in a televised forum that stressed attacks on the Carter administration's foreign and military policy, and federal deficits. But their clearest unanimity was in criticizing former Gov. Ronald Reagan for not joining them in the debate. [New York Times]
- An investigator of Nazi war crimes is being reassigned by the Justice Department to other duties. Martin Mendelsohn, who established the government's Nazi investigation program in 1977, is expected to be removed as deputy director of the Office of Special Investigations today. Disputes between Mr. Mendelsohn and the office's director are believed to have led to his dismissal. [New York Times]
- A visit to Peking was begun by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. It is the first visit to China by a senior Pentagon official since the Communists took control of China in 1949. Mr. Brown's journey was planned last fall, but he told reporters that "clearly what's happened in Afghanistan gives the visit added significance" and that he expected to discuss the Soviet intervention with the Chinese. [New York Times]
- More than 17,000 guerrillas reported to truce points in Rhodesia in observance of the cease-fire, but a dispute that threatens the peace pact was developing over whether some of them were genuine members of the Patriotic Front or substitutes sent by the guerrillas. Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa said he did not believe that the men reporting constituted an effective guarantee of peace. He said "many of the men in the camps are mujibas who have been armed by the Patriotic Front forces, who themselves have remained in the bush." [New York Times]