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The Battalion
/ol. 82 No. 57 CISPS 045360 12 pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, November 18, 1986
ll.S. has ‘no plans’ for more sales to Iran
■ —WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi-
dei t Reagan said Monday he has
solutely no plans” to send more
is to Iran, although his spokes-
said the president’s authoriza-
on for the weapons shipments tech-
iwally remains in effect.
H\s he posed for pictures at the
stai 1: of a meeting with Argentine
President Raul Alfonsin, Reagan was
■ Hed if there would he more U.S.
& His shipments to Iran like those he
pi IHnfirmed last week after numerous
r I Iptihlished reports of secret U.S.-Ira-
""pan dealings.
^^^H‘We have absolutely no plans to
^“""Hany such thing,” Reagan told re-
■ Dfvn
Vat
ants
porters. Nor, he said, would he be
Firing Secretary of State George
Shultz or any other top foreign pol
icy advisers as a result of public con
troversy over the covert operation.
Presidential spokesman Larry
Speakes, meanwhile, said Reagan
had told him there would be no fur
ther arms shipments but that the “in
telligence Finding,” a Jan. 17 docu
ment authorizing the weapons and
spare parts sales, is technically “still
in effect” because it carried no time
limit and has not been rescinded.
The spokesman also said the Ira
nians paid cash for the military sup
plies they received under Reagan’s
order, although neither the amount
nor the precise weaponry supplied
has been disclosed.
The Iranians long have been seek
ing a variety of weapons and spare
parts for their U.S.-made planes and
equipment ordered and paid for
during the reign of the Shah of Iran,
but whose delivery was blocked
when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
was seized and Americans were
taken hostage.
Speakes said that despite the halt
in further arms shipments, which
Reagan has said were intended to es
tablish credibility with Iranians the
United States was trying to court,
oral efforts to improve relations with
moderate Iranian leaders may con
tinue.
“Certainly we would like to con
tinue our original goal, and that was
to develop contacts with Iran so that
we could deal with that country in
the future,” Speakes said. “We
would be hopeful that we could, on
some basis, continue our contacts in
order to develop that and to work
for a peaceful resolution to the Iran-
Iraq war.”
Asked about a suggestion by
Iran’s ambassador to the United Na
tions, Said Rajaie Khorassani, that
the United States must supply weap
ons to Iran if it wants Iran to help
win the release of Americans still
held hostage in Lebanon, Speakes
said: “We will not trade arms for
hostages.”
Khorassani, in an interview with
IRNA, the official Iranian news
agency, said Reagan had negotiated
with Iran for release of hostages be
cause of Tehran’s “power and influ
ence” over kidnap groups.
“The justification was that if the
matter was to be solved through an
influential mediator, Iran was the
right choice, and, therefore, some of
their demands, including the supply
of defensive arms to Iran, must be
met,” Irna quoted him as saying.
Reagan has insisted that although
the United States sought Iranians’
help in freeing the hostages as a
measure of their willingness to deal
with the United States, there was
never a ransom paid for the three
hostages who were released during
the period the secret diplomacy and
arms shipments were taking place.
On Sunday, Shultz said he would
oppose sending more arms to Iran
but that he spoke only for himself
and not for the Reagan administra
tion in that regard.
Council reviews
public response
to MSC program
Rudy Vavra, an instructor at Texas A&M’s College of Ar
chitecture, displays his floor collage, which is open for viewing
"churches pledge
|o continue quest
to free hostages
in Rudder Exhibit Hall until Nov. 26.
create the collage, his fourth at A&M.
By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Staff Writer
The MSC Council debated Mon
day whether it should respond to
public and media criticism of a re
cent Political Forum program.
The day before the Nov. 4 elec
tion, Vice President George Bush,
Gov.-elect Bill Clements, Sen. Phil
Gramm and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton
appeared at Rudder Auditorium for
what has been criticized as a partisan
political event titled “A Panorama of
Republican Perspectives on Issues
Facing the State of Texas.”
“One of the confusions is that
people think we programmed it to
be a political rally when we didn’t,”
said Allison Kruest, vice-president of
the MSC Cultural Program Commit
tee.
“I think we need to make it clear
to people that we didn’t,” she said,
“and if that takes some kind of re
sponse, it needs to be done.”
Much of the discussion centered
on how the MSC Council should re
spond, if at all, to critical newpaper
editorials and a proposed Faculty
Senate inquiry concerning the pre
election program.
MSC faculty adviser Sylvia Grider
quoted an editorial in the Nov. 12 is
sue of the Bryan-College Station Ea-
gle.
In part, the editorial said, “For the
students ramrodded into participat
ing in this sham, the whole experi
ence should prove to be a practical
lesson in real-world cynicism.”
She asked how the committee
- should respond to this and similar
remarks in the press.
MSC faculty adviser Jim Edwards
said it’s the council’s standard prac
tice not to respond to criticism.
“From an administrative stand
point, I think you never really win by
getting involved in debates in the
newspaper,” Edwards said.
“I personally would be inclined to
respond to those kinds of things,” he
said. “I hate to see those kinds of
things said about students.”
Perry Eichor, executive vice presi
dent for administration, said he
doesn’t think the council is answera
ble to the Faculty Senate and it
would be better to let the contro
versy pass without any response
from the council.
“My concern with responding to
the Faculty Senate or anybody like
that is. . . we’re going to reach a
point where we feel like we have to
start answering everybody who has a
question about any kind of program
ming we do,” Eichor said.
Houston AIDS treatment center
to lure patients from both coasts
■ LONDON (AP) — Anglican
(■lurch envoy Terry Waite, flanked
by three American former hostages,
said Monday that news of secret U.S.
K arms supplies to Iran and arguments
over it complicated his efforts to free
^ other captives in Lebanon.
■ Waite addressed a crowded news
a conference after a meeting with the
I H-hostages and with five American
representatives from the Episcopal,
Presbyterian and Baptist churches.
■ He denied he has been a tool of
the U.S. administration and said he
had been shuttling to and from the
Middle East on hostage-release mis
sions unaware of the arms supplies.
I “We in the churches stand clearly
together to continue our work no
Blatter what comes our way,” Waite
said.
I “But the revelation of that fact
(arms supplies to Iran) . . . has at this
point made the job of a mediator
such as myself complicated,” he said.
■ Waite acted in hostage negotia
tions as personal envoy of Arcbishop
of Canterbury Robert Runcie. Run-
cie accompanied him at the news
conference.
I The three ex-hostages, the Rev.
Benjamin Weir, the Rev. Lawrence
Partin Jenco and David Jacobsen,
former head of the American Uni-
rsity Hospital in Beirut, paid trib
ute to Waite and prayed for the re-
ase of remaining captives.
The meeting appeared mainly an
tempt to refocus attention on hu-
; ttianitarian release efforts, which
iS'Bave been overshadowed by Presi-
2- (ient Reagan’s acknowledgment last
yweek, after days of speculation, that
he sent arms supplies to Iran.
:,| Reagan denied the arms were a
trade for hostages.
Waite said “the speculations of the
last week” surrounding Reagan’s
lisclosure mean that “from this
Joint onward the task has been
lade immeasurably more difficult.”
He said many of his contacts in
Lebanon “have now gone to ground
and they may not surface again.”
Asked if new initiatives emerged
from Monday’s meeting, Waite said
there was nothing specific, but the
churchmen and ex-hostages had a
“great deal to think about.”
Waite and Runcie sought to dis
tance church efforts from the man-
ueverings of politicians.
“At the international level govern
ments always have, and no doubt will
continue, to strike bargains both in
secret and in public,” Waite said.
“As a representative of the
church, I would have nothing to do
with any deal which seemed to me to
breach the code to which I sub
scribe,” he said.
Weir, 61, the first of the three
American hostages freed by Islamic
Jihad in Lebanon, was let go Sept.
See Hostage, page 8
AUSTIN (AP) — Because it has
the only AIDS treatment and re
search institution between both
coasts, Texas is fated to lure patients
with the deadly acquired immune
deficiency syndrome, a doctor says.
“Texas will become a focus for
people with this disease because they
have nowhere else to go,” said Dr.
Peter Mansell, medical director of
the Institute for Immunological Dis
orders in Houston.
Mansell, who has spent almost five
years researching AIDS and treating
people who have the disease, said
the only evaluation centers for the
disease in the United States are on
the East and West coasts and at the
Houston facility.
Mansell was a featured speaker
last week at a Texas Department of
Health conference on AIDS.
Experts at the conference said the
27,500 AIDS cases reported nation
wide — 1,704 in Texas — are ex
pected to grow as high as 275,000 by
1991.
Few AIDS patients survive longer
than 22 months after diagnosis of
the disease, the experts said.
AIDS is transmitted sexually and
covery of a second strain of the
deadly virus, said science may never
find a cure for the disease. .
“It isn’t appropriate to frighten
people about AIDS, but it is appro
priate to be frightened,” he said.
“Texas will become a focus for people with this disease
because they have nowhere else to go. ”
— Dr. Peter Mansell, medical director of the Institute
for Immunological Disorders in Houston
through contaminated blood, but
not by casual contact, they said.
Most of the 15,000 people who
have died have been homosexual
males, but “it is evident that AIDS is
leaking into the heterosexual pop
ulation,” Mansell said.
Mansell, who noted the recent dis-
“I think AIDS is something that is
with us for the rest of time,” he said.
Mansell said he was “constitution
ally a pessimist,” and his fear of
there being no cure was disputed by
Ann Rose, a science adviser at the
U.S. Department of Health and Hu
man Services.
Rose said she believes that while
no one drug might ever be able to
cure AIDS, it eventually would be
cured by several drugs in combina
tion.
“At least that’s what the current
theories are,” she said.
They also differed over the effi
cacy of AZT, or azidothymidine, an
anti-viral drug recently shown to
have cut the death rates in some pa
tients.
“It is not a cure, but it prolongs
the life of AIDS patients,” she said.
While acknowledging that some
patients at his Houston hospital are
“already on AZT and many more
want it” Mansell said the drug’s suc
cess had been overblown and com
plications from it, such as severe
anemia, underplayed.
“I don’t mean to say that it’s no
good, but I don’t think we know
enough about it,” he said.
News agency reports North Korean leader alive
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Ko
rean President Kim II Sung, said in some re
ports to have been slain in a shootout, greeted
a Mongolian delegation at Pyongyang’s air
port, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua
reported Tuesday.
If true, the Xinhua report from Pyong
yang, the North Korean capital, would dispel
rumors about the fate of the 74-year-old
leader.
The report was monitored in Tokyo.
Japan’s Kyodo News Service also reported
at 7:31 p.m. CST Monday that Kim had “wel
comed a Mongolian party delegation today on
its arrival at Pyongyang Airport.” Kyodo did
not attribute its report.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry reported
Sunday in Seoul that broadcasts from North
Korean loudspeakers along the demilitarized
zone said Kim, leader of his country since it
was created in 1948, had been killed in a
shooting incident.
The arrival of the Mongolian delegation,
led by Zhambyn Batmunkh, chairman of the
Mongolian Council of Ministers, had been ex
pected to provide some indication of Kim’s
status.
The news appears to lay to rest rumors not
only of Kim’s death but of a power struggle in
the country of 19 million that shares the Ko
rean peninsula with its archenemy South Ko
rea.
On Monday, South Korean Defense Min
ister Lee Ki-Baek had told the National As
sembly that “judging from all such circum
stances, it is believed that Kim has died or
(that) a serious internal power struggle is
going on there.”
According to reports in Seoul, Kim had set
into motion plans to relinquish power to his
44-year-old son, Kim Jong II, creating the
first Communist dynasty.
The reports said senior military command
ers in the north opposed the succession.
The elder Kim came to power in 1948 with
the backing of the Soviet Union after the pen
insula was divided at the end of World War
II.
The 1950-53 Korean War deepened the ac
rimony between the two Koreas, and 40,000
American soldiers are based in South Korea
to prevent a resumption of fighting.
Kim, known as “The Great Father Leader,”
created a personality cult unrivaled in the
Communist world since the death of Chinese
leader Mao Tse-tung in 1976.
Portraits of Kim hang in nearly every
household and public building and a pilgrim-
mage to his birthplace, Mangyongdae, has be
come an almost required ritual in North Ko
rea.
Kim created one of the world’s most closed
societies.
No Western reporters are known to be
based in Pyongyang.
An Austrian trade representative in Pyong
yang, reached by telephone Monday from Pe
king, said “so far there has been no indication
whatsoever” Kim was dead.
“There is no movement on the streets,”
Wolfgang Entmayer said. “I went through
Pyongyang twice today, there was no sign of
any military movements. . . . There was really
nothing unusual. . .
Seoul also appeared normal, although na
tional police were on special alert, and the
South Korean military was on its usual high
state of alert.
Reports that Kim was shot dead were den
ied by North Korean embassy officials in seve
ral places, including Peking and New Delhi,
India.
“We know that President Kim II Sung is
working and healthy in North Korea,” said
Kang So Yong, the first secretary at the em
bassy in Peking. “That story is completely
made up by somebody. It is not true.”