Replay Sonntag, 9. Dezember 1984

HEADLINES BLARING, CITY'S TABLOIDS STEP UP BATTLE

Date: 10 December 1984

By Alex S. Jones

Alex Jones

A new, rough and head-to-head form of competition has flared in New York City's long and bitter tabloid newspaper war between The Daily News and The New York Post. ''It's two tabs slugging it out on the streets of New York,'' said F. Gilman Spencer, the tabloid veteran who has been editor of The News since early September. Since becoming publisher of The News seven months ago, James Hoge has steered the paper away from the more low-key tone it generally used since the late-1960's. Change at the paper has come as Mr. Hoge has struggled to reverse The News's persistent circulation losses and simultaneously searched for ways to trim expenses, which he said would rise by a minimum of 1.7 percent in 1985. Nowhere has The News's battle for readers been more apparent than on its front page, where big, sassy and occasionally lurid headlines now cry to potential readers from newsstands in a competitive chorus with those of The Post. ''Screams Ignored, She's Shot Dead,'' declared the front page of The News earlier this month.

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Tass Joins Yule Tour

Date: 10 December 1984

By Willian E. Farrell and Warren Weaver Jr

Willian Farrell

Are there signs of a thaw in United States-Soviet relations? Well, when Nancy Reagan conducts her annual press tour of the White House and its Christmas decorations this morning, joining the usual newspaper and news agency reporters and television cameras for the first time will be a representative of Tass, the Soviet press agency, which asked and was granted permission to cover the tour. Mrs. Reagan will describe for the visitors the giant Christmas tree in the Blue Room, the cr eche in the East Room and the Gingerbread House in the State Dining Room.

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U.S. Envoy in Saudi Arabia

Date: 09 December 1984

Reuters

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia held talks today with the Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Richard W. Murphy, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. It gave no details of the talks.

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U.S. and Britain Conduct Test of Nuclear Device

Date: 10 December 1984

AP

The United States and Britain detonated a high-yield nuclear device today in an underground test beneath the desert at the Nevada test site. In Washington Peter West, a spokesman for the British Embassy, declined to discuss details of the test, other than to say it was to ''maintain the effectiveness of the United Kingdom's nuclear capability.'' The test reportedly had an explosive force equivalent to that of 20,000 to 150,000 tons of TNT, placing it in the highest range of tests conducted at the Nevada site.

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Up the Stairs to Arms Control

Date: 10 December 1984

The big news in arms control is that Paul Nitze has moved from the fifth to the seventh floor of the State Department. That gives Secretary of State Shultz easy access to some of the weapons expertise and bureaucratic skill he needs to take charge of nuclear diplomacy - if only the President will now guard the Secretary's other flanks. Mr. Nitze is better placed upstairs not because the department's elevators are slow but because the opponents of arms control, all over this Administration, are fast. For four years, they have stymied every genuine effort at negotiation, outrunning the few officials, like Mr. Nitze, who thought Mr. Reagan sincerely wanted to reach accord with the Russians.

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THE PUNITIVE LIBEL TRIALS

Date: 10 December 1984

By Ira Glasser

Ira Glasser

Irrespective of their merits, the two giant libel trials going on in New York City should be immediately dismissed because of their chilling effect on the press. In addition, Federal steps should be taken to insure that no such trials are ever permitted again. It will cost CBS at least $2 million to defend itself in the $120 million libel suit brought by Gen. William C. Westmoreland. Time magazine, too, is paying heavily in the $50 million suit brought by Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Defense Minister.

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HONDURAS MAKES NEW DEMANDS ON U.S.

Date: 10 December 1984

By Philip Taubman

Philip Taubman

As part of an effort to obtain increased aid and diplomatic concessions from the United States, Honduras has recently presented a new series of demands to the Reagan Administration, according to Honduran and American officials. They said the new demands include a request that Washington resettle 12,000 Nicaraguan rebels in the United States if their military campaign against the Sandinistas collapses. The new demands also include proposals that the United States intervene to settle a Honduran border dispute with El Salvador, and that the United States stop treating all American military forces in Honduras as diplomatic personnel. Honduran and United States officials both say Honduras has linked future use of its territory for American military exercises and the forward basing of military supplies to its requests.

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COMING ARMS TALKS: BONN WAITS WARILY

Date: 10 December 1984

By James M. Markham

James

The approaching renewal of preliminary talks between Washington and Moscow over nuclear weapons holds out both possibilities and pitfalls for the Government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, which is badly in need of foreign policy breakthroughs to offset difficulties at home. On the positive side, the resumption of Soviet- American arms talks could vindicate the Kohl Government's championing of American medium- range missiles in West Germany, soften the overall East-West climate and permit Bonn to revive its stalled diplomatic openings to East Berlin and other Warsaw Pact capitals. All this would be to Mr. Kohl's advantage as he tries to lead his center-right coalition out of a political corruption scandal and into crucial state elections early next year in West Berlin, the Saarland and North Rhine-Westphalia. But, in the view of officials and Western diplomats here, a mishandling of the incipient Washington-Moscow discussions could give Mr. Kohl's domestic foes new ammunition and revive the dormant coalition of pacifists, church groups and Communists that led the failed campaign against the basing of Pershing 2 missiles in West Germany.

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SHULTZ, WEINBERGER NONDIFFERENCES

Date: 09 December 1984

By J. William Fulbright and Seth P. Tillman

J. Fulbright

It has been widely taken as something of a paradox that Secretary of State George P. Shultz has emerged within the Reagan Administration as a vigorous advocate of the use of force, while the Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger advocates caution and discrimination in the application of American military power. In fact, there may be less to their apparent differences than meets the eye. This is not to say that there are no differences, or that the ''Weinberger doctrine'' is not a useful statement of the need for prudence drawn from the Vietnam experience. Nor is this the first time that the professional military, for which Mr. Weinberger speaks, has recognized potential hazards that diplomats and politicians tend to overlook. It was the infantry generals, above all President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself, who opposed American involvement in the first Indochina war in 1954, as against the inclinations of then Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Soldiers are understandably wary of quagmires.

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BIPARTISAN REPORT

Date: 10 December 1984

By George Vecsey

George Vecsey

The most fascinating finding in The New York Times/CBS Sports Poll, reported in these pages yesterday, was that Republicans tend to favor high-scoring football games, while Democrats tend to prefer low-scoring games. This trend overshadowed the broader findings that there is not any huge swell of articulated disaffection behind the slumping television ratings. It was certainly hard to fault pro football this weekend - not with television giving Marty Glickman back to our ears for one tantalizing Saturday afternoon, and four Eastern Division contenders, the Giants, the Cardinals, the Redskins and the Cowboys, staging an all-day game-a-thon yesterday. The Giant-Cardinal game was a bipartisan success, except to that sizable interest group of Giant fans whose partisanship has jumped from 1 to 5 percent as America's favorite team during their winning season. Giant fans could not have enjoyed the 31-21 loss in St. Louis, as seen over CBS yesterday, but there was plenty of offense to satisfy the Republicans and plenty of defense to satisfy the Democrats.

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