Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 1

1 989 The Arizona Daily Star -r- Vol. 148 No. 357 Final Edition, Tucson, Saturday, December 23, 1989 35 52 Pages flow mm mays U.S. officials say military police may stay for up to a year. Page 7A.

Troops who storm a Noriega stronghold find a "witch house." Page 8A. Noriega supporters attack American post The Associated Press A Pentagon source said yesterday that 2,000 more soldiers would be airlifted to Panama, bolstering the force already there, and President Bush said the troops would stay "to do what is necessary." In Panama City, fighters loyal to Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega launched a bold daylight attack on the headquarters of U.S. military forces and tried to assassinate the vice president installed by the United States. The Pentagon source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "the decision has been made" to bolster roughly 24,000 U.S.

troops already on the ground trying to quell the resistance. "The movement will be taking place in the near future," he added. On the third day of the U.S. occupation, Panama City was near anarchy. Refugees pleaded for food and medicine as waves of looters ransacked stores.

U.S. troops searched residential areas of the capital and other parts of this West Virginia-sized nation for Noriega, but found no trace of the ousted dictator they were sent in to capture. Panamanians seemed to greet the U.S. troops with some enthusiasm, but many residents of this city, racked by savage looting and littered with debris, were too frightened to go out on the streets. Some said they had set up their own defense patrols to protect themselves and their neighbors amid the chaos, which reigned in both lower- and middle-class neighborhoods.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said U.S. troops had seized 10,000 weapons, mostly made in the East bloc, in three separate caches in the city. Lt Gen. Tom Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the discoveries "little short of astonishing" and said they led to questions about what Noriega's plans may have been. The U.S.-installed first vice president, Ricardo Arias Calderon, was leaving the National Assembly when members of pro-Noriega "Dignity Battalions" shot at his car.

Arias was uninjured, but two of his aides were wounded, said Arias aide Teni de Obaldia. The fighting around the U.S. Southern Command in Quarry Heights, on the western edge of Panama City, started about 11:25 a.m. and lasted an hour, with mortar blasts shaking the U.S. headquarters as dozens of Noriega supporters attacked buildings nearby.

Military officials at Rodman Naval Station, just across the Panama Canal, said they had no Information on casualties. The Supreme Court, about a mile to the southeast, See PANAMA, Page7A Celebration of unity Rebel troops join Romanians to oust Ceausescu 1 fv It- i--rr ni mmm i if iM i fiO p. (Si A A 1 'r 1989 AP file photo Nicolae Ceausescu "I can't believe my is free now," cries a Romanian native living In Page9A. Hundreds killed; fighting continues By Mort Rosenblum The Associated Press BUCHAREST, Romania Outraged Romanians and rebel soldiers toppled President Nicolae Ceau-sescu yesterday in fierce, daylong battles with troops loyal to the Soviet bloc's last dictator. Hundreds were reported killed in the fighting, which continued early today.

About 2:30 a.m. (5:30 p.m. Tucson time yesterday), heavy gunfire broke out around Romania's main television station, where dissidents and those trying to form a new leadership had been broadcasting to the Romanian people yesterday. Occupants of the building ducked out of the windows as shots were fired toward the building and the lights went out. Minutes before the shooting started in the tense capital, crowds were still outside the TV building chanting slogans in support of the popular revolt.

Yesterday morning, Ceausescu fled his presidential palace as hundreds of thousands of Romanians called for his death in retaliation for the massacre of their countrymen in a military crackdown unleashed a week ago. The Yugoslav state news agency, Tanjug, reported that Ceausescu was hunted down and captured, although it gave no details in its report from Bucharest. There was no confirmation of his capture from Romanian radio, and his whereabouts was unknown. Army units joining with protesters had been winning control of Bucharest from loyalist security forces in battles that continued into the night. Fighting also was reported late last night in the western city of Timisoara, where the revolt began on Dec.

15. A source in Timisoara said pro-Ceausescu commandos dropped by parachute had descended on the town and opened fire on people in the center. "I can hear shots," the source said in a telephone interview with Tte Associated Press office in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. "Tanks are now rolling The Associated Press Symbols Of peace East Germany knocks two new ceremony is watched by East German Premier Hans Modrow, lower holes in the Berlin Wall, restoring to the German people their historic left, West Berlin Mayor Walter Momper, West German Chancellor Hel-symbol of unity the Brandenburg Gate. Free access to It was denied mut Kohl and West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

by the wall, begun In 1961. A white pigeon released at the opening Story, Page9A. Ethics panel to investigate 5 senators' Keating ties DeConcini, McCain say they welcome preliminary inquiry in and the people are applauding, but it is not known exactly who is in the tanks." The death toll from yesterday's uprising was believed to be in the hundreds, in addition to the thousands of civilians reported killed since the start of the unrest The tumult capped a historic year of change in the Soviet bloc that elsewhere was relatively bloodless: Solidarity took power in Poland, Hungary ousted its Communist hard-liners and opened its borders, and old-guard regimes in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria were thrown out in swift succession. Provisional leader Ion Iliescu appeared on Romanian TV along with other members of a National Salvation Committee that the media said was formed to run the country temporarily. He, along with former Foreign Minister Corneliu Manescu, said free elections would be sought by April.

"Over 20 years of dictatorship and oppression, we have lost the habit of using freedom," the Soviet news See ROMANIA, Page 10A diverting the assets of Lincoln Savings and Loan of California. The government seized the thrift in April, and the failure is expected to be one of the worst in the nation's history. "The committee believes that fairness to all concerned requires a thorough and complete review of all relevant facts and circumstances," the panel said in a statement. The inquiry is the first of three steps in a formal investigation, said Paul Jacobson, a spokesman for Sen. Warren Rudman, committee vice chairman.

The committee hired a special outside counsel to conduct the investigation in August. A formal declaration of the investigation was needed to conduct further examinations and subpoena witnesses, said Jacobson. Both Arizona senators welcomed the committee's announcement. "I'm pleased that they are moving ahead. This does start the clock ticking for the purpose of bringing it to a conclusion, and I believe I'll be exonerated," DeConcini said in a news conference.

The Arizona Democrat said later that the Lincoln debacle has damaged his popularity because people do not "know the whole story." The committee has asked the senators for information about their contacts with and contributions from Keating. The information is due in mid-January, DeConcini said. McCain, a Republican, said through a spokesman that he hopes the ethics panel will move forward quickly. "We are pleased that there is a time deadline See ETHICS, Page 4A By Anne Hazard States News Service WASHINGTON The Senate Ethics Committee said yesterday that it will investigate whether five senators improperly aided savings and loan owner Charles Keating Jr. after receiving campaign contributions from him.

Arizona Sens. Dennis DeConcini and John McCain, and Sens. John Glenn, D-Ohio, Alan Cranston, and Donald W. Riegle received approximately $1.3 million in contributions from Keating and are targets of the panel. All have denied wrongdoing.

Keating, a Phoenix millionaire, is accused of IWEA1HER Nation shivering as numbing cold spell hangs on, snaps records in 125 cities Romanians recover bodies from mass graves in forest Let the sunshine in. Today is expected to be sunny with winds out of the north at 5 to 15 mph. Look for a high around 70, and a low in the upper 30s. Yesterday's high was 68, and the low 33. The skies are expected to be clear over the weekend and Christmas with highs in the upper 60s.

Details on Page 3A. Nationwide, nearly 60 deaths have been blamed on the weeklong cold spell, including the death yesterday of a 35-year-old Oklahoma City man who died while walking a half-mile home after his car apparently ran out of gas. "If it gets cold enough long enough, we've got a disaster," said William Moon, sales manager for Zellwin Farms in Jacksonville, which has everything from carrots and lettuce to parsley and radishes in the ground in northwest Orange County. The strain on utilities caused scattered power outages and prompted Potomac Electric Power in Washington, D.C, to temporarily cut its voltage by 5 percent yesterday morning to prevent outages. Potomac Electric spokesman Tom Welle said oil-fired generators were using fuel quicker than the pipeline supplying the plant could deliver it Among the cities to set cold records were: Beckley, W.Va., minus 13; Bismarck, N.D., minus 32; Calico Rock, minus Cedar Rapids, Iowa, minus 19; Del Rio, Texas, 17; Duluth, minus 22; Paducah, Ky minus 10, Kansas City, minus 19; Omaha, minus 25.

The weather service said more temperature records were expected to topple throughout yesterday. "The number of record lows today was as great as that of Christmas Day in 1983, and establishes this cold wave, along with those of December 1983 and February See 125 CITIES, Page 2A By Stephanie Nano The Associated Press The Deep Freeze snapped temperature records yesterday in more than 125 cities from the Rockies to the East Coast, making it one of the worst cold spells on record, the National Weather Service said. The temperature dipped to minus 47 in the southeastern Montana towns of Broadus and Hardin the coldest spots yesterday in the lower 48 states. It was so cold in the Adirondack Mountains in New York that a bobsled competition was canceled. And Hot Springs, wasn't even lukewarm.

"It's just indescribably cold," Police Lt Carl Goolsby said yesterday in Memphis, where people "just don't know how to dress for this weather." The bitter cold caused concern for citrus growers, farmers and those who care for the homeless, the poor and the elderly. Utilities reported record usage as customers tried to keep warm. jlj In New York City, where the arctic chill sent 9,200 people to shelters Thursday night, demonstrators erected four tombstones outside City Hall to mark the deaths of four homeless people who died of exposure while sleeping in the city subway system last weekend. "These tragic deaths have gone virtually unnoticed, and we more affluent New Yorkers seem to have let our hearts grow colder and more hardened than the bitter winter," said David Beseda of the Coalition for the Homeless. said he was trying to find his 20-year-old son, who disappeared during the unrest He said the corpses had been transported by garbage trucks to the area, and the drivers were later shot by the police so no witnesses would be left West German television, parently showing footage provided by Romanian TV, showed muddied, naked corpses being dug out and placed on white sheets, one after the other.

All had their feet tied together with wire. A dead boy, about 3 or 4 years old, was shown lying on the ground. "Not even Hitler killed his own children, and here they used automatic machine gun bursts to strafe them down," said Slavomir Gvoz-denovic, editor of a literary review in Timisoara. By Dusan Stojanovic The Associated Press TIMISOARA, Romania Hundreds of people yesterday were digging up mass graves discovered in the forest district of Timisoara, trying to find the remains of their friends and relatives killed in last weekend's crackdown. Three such mass graves are believed to hold as many as 4,500 corpses of people massacred by the security forces last Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

There was no independent confirmation of the number of dead. Timisoara, 500 miles from Bucharest near the Yugoslav and Hun-" garian border, was the center of protests that were brutally suppressed by the regime of President Nicolae Ceausescu. Vasile Todorescu, an electrician. INDEX Accent 1-C Bridge 2C Classified S-18D Comics 1U7A Crossword 8D DearAbby 2C Dr.Gott 2C Horoscope 2C Money MB Movies 5C Obituaries 8D Public 4B Sports 1-7D Tucson today 2C TV 7C.