The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 18

Valley Edition urn Awiete Circulation: 1,103,656 Daily 1,368,105 Sunday Tuesday, August 26, 1986 FCCt 106 PagCS Copyright 1986The Times Mirror Company Daily 25t Cameroon Gas Toll Put at 1,200 Traces of Toxic Cloud Remain, Evacuation Goes On, Regime Says By DAN FISHER, Times Staff Writer AiilllttJlllpiF nf if I i ii i in Associated Press Together Anatoly Shcharansky hugs his brother, Leonid, and, left, Leonid's wife, Raya, Vienna airport members took with son Boris. The relatives were allowed by the Soviets to emigrate as part of the agreement Shcharansky. Story, Page 16) one village was wiped out. Lake Nios is in a relatively densely populated mountainous area, in a dramatic chain of volcanic peaks and valleys that reaches into eastern Nigeria and includes some of the country's most fertile agricultural lands. Villagers live in small clusters of straw and stick huts on the hillsides and grow millet and cassava.

A crisis center has been established in Bamenda, the provincial capital 50 miles from the site, where survivors are being treated. A Frightful Sight' Joseph Mokassa, top staff aide to the provincial governor in Bamenda, told the Associated Press by telephone that he saw many people dead when he visited the stricken area Saturday but did not have precise figures on the toll. "It was such a frightful sight because so many people had lost their lives," he said. "There are three problems confronting us now," Biya told reporters. "The first one is to try to check an epidemic from coming out of this area.

In doing this, we are trying to isolate this area. "The second problem is to try to find shelter for the people being evacuated," Biya said. "And the third problem is, of course, to find treatment for people who have been evacuated." Yaounde radio reported Monday night that it rained all day in the disaster area, which could dispel the gas and reduce the danger. Biya thanked Israel, France, the United States and other countries that have offered disaster relief and said his nation needs tents, blankets and medicines to aid the victims. He also pleaded for "scientific Please see CAMEROON, Page 14 YAOUNDE, Cameroon A poisonous cloud of gases that erupted from the bottom of a volcanic lake and wafted over sleeping lakeside villages last Friday night killed at least 1,200 people and injured 300, President Paul Biya said Monday.

Biya, who visited the disaster area Sunday, added that, while the seepage has apparently stopped, there are remnants of the toxic but still unidentified gas cloud in a mountainous, six-square-mile region around Lake Nios, about 250 miles northwest of Yaounde, Cameroon's capital. "Precautions have to be taken," the president told a small group of Israeli and Western journalists who traveled here Monday with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. "I was told the gas had subsided, but we must still be careful." Evacuation Goes On Hundreds of villagers are still being evacuated, and the army and police are searching for more victims of the disaster, Biya added. Other officials said that the nearest large settlement, the town of Wum, with about 10,000 residents, was also evacuated. The death toll could go higher as the army continues to report on its findings, Biya warned.

Earlier, Information Minister Georges Ngan-go had said that military reports from the scene mentioned a death toll of at least 2,000. Biya said witnesses described a sound like an explosion at Lake Nios late Friday, after most villagers had gone to bed. "After the explosion took place and the gas came out, the wind blew it toward the villages and this is how it brought death to the people," Biya said. The eruption spread the gas six miles around the lake, and at least Falling Enrollment Test Makers Now Search for Answers By WILLIAM TROMBLEY, Times Staff Writer PRINCETON, N.J.-At the handsome, 400-acre campus of Educational Testing Service, the nation's most influential designer and manufacturer of standardized tests, -officials face a predicament. More students than ever 1.7 million, most of them high school juniors and seniors took the most popular ETS test, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, last year.

An additional 1.2 million, mostly high school sophomores, took the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), which helped to prepare them for the SAT. Yet the chief purpose of these tests to help admissions officers make difficult decisions among many qualified freeman applicantsis disappearing as higher education enrollment falls. Decline to Continue Total enrollment in higher education institutions dropped 2 in 1984-85, and because the "baby boom" has ended and the number of potential college students is headed into a steady decline, further drops are expected until the mid-1990s. "The northeastern states will drop 40 in high school graduates in the next few years and there will be similar declines in the Midwest and South," said Solomon Arbeiter, associate director of research and development for the College Board, the organization of colleges and secondary schools that sponsors the SAT. Although an estimated 100 colleges and universities remain highly selective, and about 300 others are somewhat selective, most of the nation's 2,500 higher education institutions now accept any student who appears to be breathing and can afford the fees.

Outlook is Not Bright This suggests a gloomy future for testing organizations such as ETS and the American College Testing Program, of Iowa City, Iowa, whose ACT examination was taken by another 1 million students last year. But ETS officials are encouraged that the number of test -takers increases each year, even as the pool of potential college applicants grows smaller. They are not sure why this is so, but think that it is because more students are taking the test several times, and because many students who previously did not consider themselves college material now think that the doors may be open. ETS also insists that the SAT serves other useful purposes for instance, to help potential students and their families "self-select" col-Please see TESTS, Page 22 Organic Decay, Moten Rocks Cited Scientists See 2 Possible Sources for Deadly Gas By THOMAS H. AUGH II, Times Science Writer mother, Ida Milgrom, 78, at before they and other family flight to Israel.

At right is Deukmejian to Oppose Grodin and Reynoso By GEORGE SKELTON, Times Sacramento Bureau Chief SACRAMENTO-Gov. George Deukmejian announced Monday that he will oppose the reconfirmation of state Supreme Court Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph R. Grodin, charging that they like Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird have demonstrated "a lack of impartiality and objectivity" in overturning death penalty sentences. Deukmejian has long been one of Bird's harshest critics, but until Monday he had held open the slim possibility of perhaps supporting the reconfirmation efforts of Reynoso and Grodin. In all, six of the California Supreme Court's seven justices will be up for voter reconfirmation on the Nov.

4 ballot. The Republican governor said he will split his vote, opposing three justices and supporting three: Edward Panelli and Malcolm Lucas, both of whom he appointed, and Stanley Mosk, the court dean. Popularity Measured Historically, it is highly unusual for a governor or any major officeholder to oppose a Supreme Court justice's reconfirmation. But Bird's unpopularity among the voters as measured by public opinion polls has focused controversy on the court and made it one of the most volatile political issues of the year in California. In fact, Deukmejian this fall intends to make criticism of the Bird court one of the centerpieces of his reelection campaign, contrasting his own public opposition to Bird, Reynoso and Grodin with Please see OPPOSE, Page 24 clearly illegal here in California?" Approval of the measure by the Senate signals that an end is in sight to the battle over divestiture which began at least 13 years ago when UC students called on the university to exercise social responsibility in investing its funds.

Gov. George Deukmejian, who in the past had opposed full-scale divestiture in favor of case-by-case action, shifted his stand in June and gave his backing to a four-year plan to divest the state of all investments linked to South Africa. The Senate action was the first legislative test for the proposal, which was amended two weeks ago into a bill by Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). The legislation is expected to win easily the approval of the Assembly as early as today. Please see DIVEST, Page 20 Shcharansky's 2 TV Ads Depict Bird as a Person With 'Backbone' By FRANK CLIFFORD, Times Staff Writer California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird parted the curtain on her fall reelection strategy for the first time Monday with the unveiling of two 30-second campaign commercials that present Bird as a person with the "backbone" necessary to protect basic constitutional freedoms.

The commercials, which will air in six cities beginning Saturday, feature the chief justice sitting at her desk, relaying upbeat messages that do not explore any of the dominant campaign issues, such as her record on the death penalty. Instead, the commercials underscore points that Bird has made in speeches, with the "backbone" message emphasizing that she is a justice who won't bend to political pressure. In one commercial, Bird says Please see BIRD, Page 24 Student Got Orders FBI Says Spy Suspect Tried Total Control By ROBERT L. JACKSON, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON An accused Soviet spy at the United Nations who was arrested over the weekend tried to control the life of the college student who was supplying him with documents, giving orders to the young man about his education, employment and even his marital status, the FBI said Monday. In a formal complaint charging Gennadiy Fedorovich Zakharov, a Soviet scientific officer at the United Nations, with conspiring to obtain and transmit secret defense documents to the Soviet Union, officials recounted how a student at Queens College in New York whom Zakharov befriended had cooperated secretly with the FBI.

The complaint said Zakharov first approached the unidentified student in April, 1983, and met him repeatedly, often at the subway stop in Queens where agents made the arrest late Saturday. Zakharov, meanwhile, was held Please see SPY, Page 18 WEATHER tMI til U.S. Weather Service forecast: Today through Wednesday fair with sunny days. Might Lows Monday 90 63 Today's forecast low 90s low 60s Wednesday's forecast low 90s 60s Aug. 25 last year 102 72 Record high Aug.

25, 1985 102 Record low Aug. 25, 1909 52 2 Complete details, Part II, Page 2. that freed Soviet Reactor Badly Flawed, Experts Say By ROBERT GILLETTE, Times Staff Writer VIENNA-The Chernobyl reactor that exploded last April in the Soviet Union was fundamentally flawed in its design and would never have been considered acceptable in Western countries, senior American and European nuclear safety authorities said here Monday. Soviet officials acknowledged that serious flaws in the reactor's design played an important role in the disaster, along with elementary mistakes made by its operating crew. But they maintained that technical remedies now being applied to similar power plants in the Soviet Union will ensure that the accident will not be repeated.

Five-Day Symposium The officials made their remarks as a five-day symposium on the Chernobyl accident, the worst in the 44-year history of nuclear energy, opened here under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. About 550 safety and health specialists are attending from 50 of the agency's 110 member states. Valery A. Legasov, a prominent designer of power reactors and head of the Soviet delegation, opened the meeting with a five-hour presentation on the causes and effects of the April 26 disaster, which has so far killed 31 people. The presentation was praised by Western specialists for its candor and wealth of detail.

'Negative Aspects' "The accident assumed catastrophic proportions because all the negative aspects of the reactor's design" were brought into play by operator errors, Legasov said. But later, at a news conference, he cautioned against overemphasizing the reactor's design weaknesses. "The only guilt of the designer is that he could not foresee the awkward and silly acts of the operators," Legasov, the first deputy head of the I.V. Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, insisted. The Chernobyl unit was one of 14 Please see NUCLEAR, Page 10 INDEX Art Part VI CALENDAR VIEW VIEW CLASSIFIED METRO VIEW CLASSIFIED VIEW METRO METRO BUSINESS CALENDAR CALENDAR SPORTS CALENDAR CALENDAR BUSINESS METRO METRO Page I 8 6 1- 18 10,11 7 18 5 2 4,5 1-20 2- 7 2,7 1-10 1,6 5A-5D 6-10 2 Astrology Brldge Classified VII ValleyClass.

II VH DearAbby Deaths Editorials II Markets IV Movies VI Music VI Sports III Stage VI TV-Radio VI Valley Business IV Valley News II Weather II With little hard evidence to go on, U.S. geologists said Monday that they believe the deadly gases in Cameroon arose from one of two sources: the decomposition of organic matter in the sediments of Lake Nios or the sudden release of such gases from molten rock far below the Earth's surface. Many scientists lean toward the latter scenario because Lake Nios lies in the crater of a near-dormant volcano, and it is now known that lethal gases released in a similar incident at nearby Lake Monoun in 1984 were of volcanic origin. The gases that killed at least 1,200 people in northwestern Cameroon were probably hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or some combination of these gases, the experts said. Wells Fargo Lowers Prime Rate to 7.5 Wells Fargo, the seventh-largest U.S.

bank, dropped its prime rate to 7.5 from 8. It was the first major bank to do so since the Federal Reserve Board cut its discount rate Wednesday from 6 to 5.5. Details in Business. Peries' Visit to Cameroon Underscores Israeli Gains Senate OKs Divestment Plan for State By RICHARD C. PADDOCK, Times Staff Writer Large quantities of such gases are dissolved in the molten rock of the Earth's core, placed there when the planet coalesced from gaseous clouds 4.5 billion years ago.

The gas remains dissolved as long as the molten rock is under high pressure from above. If the pressure is released suddenly, such as in a volcanic eruption, according to UCLA geochem-ist Arthur Boettcher, the gas is explosively released. Boettcher compared the phenomenon to removing the cap from a bottle of soda pop that has been shaken. This explosive gas release produces most of the violence associated with volcanic eruptions such as that at Mt. St.

Helens. "If there were no dissolved gases, the lava Please see GAS, Page 14 "It's like when the Pope came," a policeman said as he watched the crowd surge around Peres at the airport. The policeman was referring to the visit in August, 1985, of Pope John Paul II. A score of native dance troupes crowded the tarmac, brightening an overcast day with their multicolored robes. Many of the garments bore likenesses of Biya and words of praise for his party, the Cameroon National Union.

The daily Cameroon Tribune carried a front-page headline in Hebrew that said "Mr. Peres, Welcome to Cameroon." But the script was printed upside-down. Despite a tiring, all-night flight from Israel, Peres clearly relished the enthusiastic greeting. He sees the trip as a milestone in Israel's effort to improve its international standing, particularly its relations Please see ISRAEL, Page 16 By DAN FISHER, Times Staff Writer YAOUNDE, Cameroon Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres arrived here Monday on a precedent-setting state visit that points up his country's most successful year in two decades of trying to counter the diplomatic boycott that followed the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. Peres, the first Israeli prime minister to set foot in black Africa since 1966, came to renew diplomatic relations with Cameroon, which were broken 13 years ago.

The formal announcement is to come in a joint communique to be signed today with Cameroon President Paul Biya. The prime minister was given an extraordinary welcome, with thousands of Cameroonians lining the 10-mile route from the airport to a presidential guest house on a wooded hilltop overlooking Yaounde, the capital. SACRAMENTO In protest of South Africa's system of apartheid, the Senate voted Monday to sell up to $11.4 billion worth of public investments in companies doing business in that racially divided nation. Approving what would be the largest divestiture plan in the United States aimed at South Africa, the Senate voted 27 to 11 in favor of legislation that would lead to the sale of University of California and state pension fund holdings in firms operating in South Africa. "How dare we allow our investment dollars that we have in trust funds to be invested in such a racist country as South Africa?" said Sen.

Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) in urging adoption of the divestiture plan. "How dare we allow the money that we contribute into our retirement system to be used to support a system that would be.