This Day In 1970's History: Tuesday February 5, 1980
- France and West Germany demanded a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan "without delay." A joint statement said that "the Soviet military intervention is unacceptable and creates grave dangers for the stability of the region and for peace." It followed the semiannual meeting of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
West European support for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow this summer appears to be building up reluctantly and at different speeds. The Foreign Ministers of France and West Germany, whose governments initially opposed a boycott, indicated at a meeting of the European Common Market in Brussels that their position is changing as pressure grows throughout the world grows for punitive measures against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. [New York Times]
- Syria's troop withdrawal from Beirut will be further delayed by President Hafez al-Assad, who announced Monday that the peacekeeping forces would be withdrawn within a 36-hour period, but changed his mind when the Lebanese Prime Minister, Selim al-Hoss, expressed alarm at the prospect of the renewal of Lebanon's civil war. An initial delay of "a few days" decided on by President Assad has now been extended for "some time." [New York Times]
- The federal bribery inquiry widened when new allegations linked Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey to a casino project sponsored by Ritz Associates in Atlantic City. Senator Howard Cannon is under inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether the Nevada Democrat had been illegally influenced in dealing with trucking deregulation legislation by a Chicago businessman with close ties to organized crime and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, law enforcement officials said. [New York Times]
- There were signs of trouble recently described in a state investigation of conditions at the New Mexico State Penitentiary, where 33 inmates were killed in a riot over the weekend. in addition, an inmates' suit pending in federal court charged charged that overcrowding the prison held a third more inmates than it had been designed for and promoted general violence and homosexual rape. [New York Times]
- The confused state of genetic testing of industrial employees to protect them from toxic chemicals has been emphasized by the surprise and concern ex-pressed by the head of the Federal agency responsible for the health and safety of American workers that a government regulation mandating genetic screening, which industry uses to determine workers' vulnerability to poisons, has been in effect for six years without her knowledge. Dr. Eula Bingham, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said that she had been unaware of the regulation until last week when interviewed by a reporter. [New York Times]
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