The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 127

2 Part ATuesday, May 23, 1989 Eoa Anjjeles SStnee WORLDNA ON WORLD 'Lynch Mob' Is After Wright, Lawyer Says Ethics Panel Asked to Drop Key Charges as House Speaker's Televised Hearing Opens From Associated Press WASHINGTON Jim Wright's defense opened before a national television audience today with his lawyer urging the House Ethics Committee to "stand in the way of the lynch mob" seeking the House bpeaker resignation. 'According to the press, Jim China Lifts Ban on Live TV News, Reopens Satellites to U.S. Nets NEW YORK Chinese authorities today lifted a ban on live satellite coverage from China imposed when martial law was declared Saturday to quell pro-democracy protests, U.S. television networks reported. "The phone rang and it was Chinese state television and they said, 'Would you guys like to book some and we said, 'We'd like said CBS correspondent Bruce Morton.

The resumption of live coverage seemed to indicate that the balance of power might be shifting to moderates opposed to the faltering crackdown on the student-led popular revolt, correspondents said. "My crystal ball on this story broke several weeks ago," Morton said, "but obviously if you are going to send tanks into Tian An Men Square and blow up the center of town. you're not going to call up the Western networks and say, 'Come on down and get back into the live television Cable News Network, ABC and NBC also resumed live satellite coverage. 8.2 Quake Occurs in South Pacific AUCKLAND, New Zealand A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 8.2 the world's strongest quake in more than two years occurred in the South Pacific about 850 miles southwest of New Zealand today. There was no immediate report of damage or injuries and no tsunami waves resulted.

New Zealand said the quake was picked up by seismological monitors in the capital of Wellington, but there were no reports that the tremor was felt in New Zealand. A spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington said the quake struck the sparsely populated Macquarie Islands region of the South Pacific. Police, Warsaw Students Clash WARSAW Polish students fought police with bare fists in central Warsaw today after a court refused to legalize their independent pro-Solidarity NZS union. About 20 protesters were detained and some were seen being beaten with batons and kicked in the stomach inside police vans.

Students packing the biggest hall in the Warsaw regional court chanted "Down with communism" after Judge Danuta Widawska announced her refusal to accept the NZS statutes and register the union as a legal association because of a clause stating that students have the right to strike. The NZS was banned with the Solidarity free trade union and Rural Solidarity under martial law in 1981. The government promised their re-legalization last month and has already registered Solidarity and Rural Solidarity. ll If if tywc' r. Associated Press House Speaker Jim Wright leaves Langley, home today as Ethics Committee opens hearing into charges against him.

START Talks to Resume June 19; U.S. Reserves Option to Change Position Shamir Rejects Baker's View of Israel's Future From Reuters LONDON Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir today bluntly rebuffed a call by Secretary of State James A. Baker III to renounce dreams of a Greater Israel and halt Jewish settlements in occupied areas. "I think it's useless, it was useless," Shamir said in response to Baker's speech Monday. Baker, addressing the foremost pro-Israel U.S.

lobby, urged Israel to give up "the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel" and forswear annexation of the occupied territories, torn by a Palestinian uprising. The Israeli leader told a London news conference that he welcomed what he understood to be Baker's "full support" for his own plan for elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. But he added: "We cannot agree to what he said about some positions of Israel in the future, or even issues not related directly to the peace initiative for instance, what he said about a Greater Israel or the settlement problem and so on. Under Pressure "I don't think these issues on which we differ are anything to do with our proposed peace initiative." Shamir, under pressure at home and abroad over his handling of the 17-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, spoke after he sought Britain's backing for the election plan in talks with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe. Shamir is proposing that the 1.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip elect negotiators to hold talks with Israel on interim self-rule and a long-term peace settlement.

He said Thatcher had accepted the principles of his plan. But a spokesman for Thatcher said that London saw the proposals as not going far enough. A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain still believes that Israel should give up land in return for peace and it backs the idea, rejected by Israel, of a Middle East peace conference. "We have welcomed the propos Wright's through. He's got to resign his speakership.

Maybe even his seat in Congress," said Stephen Susman, attorney for the Texas Democrat. "Why worry about due process for a dead man?" he asked rhetorically. "Why should this committee stand in the way of a lynch mob or a conviction based upon guilt by association?" Because "if a member of Congress cannot get a fair trial no American can," he said. Trial-Like Setting The arguments were made in a trial-like setting, with Susman and his team at a "defense" table and the Ethics Committee investigators poised behind an identical table across the room. A central lectern allowed the lawyers to speak while standing before the committee, which sat behind a raised, wood-paneled dais.

Wright's wife, Betty, arrived during Susman's arguments and took a seat in the front row of the audience. One of the Speaker's daughters also attended, but Wright did not. Susman was asking the Ethics Committee today to dismiss key charges against Wright based on different interpretations of the House rules. Supporters hope for a narrow legal victory that the Speaker could parlay into political salvation. However, Richard Phelan, the outside counsel who investigated Wright for the committee, argued that the panel should not look narrowly at the legal arguments.

"This case and this discussion is not about loopholes in tax codes," Phelan said. "It's not about carefully crafting legislation to permit persons to evade or to circumvent or to look askance." Wright's lawyers contend that he is being judged by a new, harsher standard that goes far beyond the letter of House rules. In advance of today's hearing, they gave themselves no better than an even chance of winning dismissal of at least some of the 69 counts against him. But with Wright's political support eroding under the weight of serious ethics charges, even the Speaker's supporters emphasize the importance of persuading the Ethics Committee to drop at least one of the two main charges. In the month since the panel formally made its charges against Wright, his support has eroded.

Members of his own party have begun holding meetings to discuss his case and its possible harmful effect on their own political situations. The stakes in today's arguments were heightened by the Ethics Committee's decision to allow television coverage of the hearing. Rarely does the panel allow such NATION National Cathedral Near Completion WASHINGTON-Washington Cathedral, 82 years in the building and one of the glories of the capital's skyline, moved a step nearer to completion today as the last load of limestone was delivered for the second-largest cathedral in the United States. "I thought once I wasn't going to be able to see it finished," said Otto Epps, the project's head laborer and a veteran of 37 years of work on the cathedral. "This is a great day," said the Rt.

Rev. John T. Walker, Episcopal bishop of Washington who said a prayer of thanksgiving at a rain-dampened ceremony on the steps of the cathedral, known to tourists as National Cathedral. From Associated Press negotiations to reduce long-range nuclear weapons will resume on June 19, Secretary of State James A. Baker III announced today.

START, for strategic arms reduction talks, was suspended last November with about 90 of the work completed on a new treaty sharply cutting back ocean-spanning bombers, missiles and nuclear submarines. The negotiations tentatively had been set to resume in February, but President Bush ordered a delay for a reassessment of U.S. arms control policy and strategic weaponry. The review was recently concluded, and Baker, on a trip to Moscow two weeks ago, reached an agreement with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev for a resumption of the negotiations.

The precise date in June was left open until now. The Soviets had been eager to resume the talks but waited for completion of the review. Baker has said the U.S. position in the Geneva talks will be to pick up where the Reagan Administration left off as it sought a cutback of 30 to 50. But Baker said the Bush Administration also reserved the option to make some changes.

He did not say what differences might emerge at the bargaining table. Among the unsettled issues are whether to try to restrict mobile land-based missiles and how to verify reductions in such elusive arms as sea-launched and air-launched cruise missiles. Max M. Kampelman, chief arms-control negotiator in the Reagan Administration, has said a treaty could be completed within a few months. That is not clear in light of possible new U.S.

bargaining positions. The Soviets also were determined to restrict the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, program that seeks to construct a defense against ballistic missiles. The strategic weapons are the most potent in the world. The two superpowers concluded a treaty in 1987 to eliminate another class of nuclear arms intermediate-range missiles that can travel from 300 to 3,000 miles.

The pact also established a system of verification that involves Soviet monitors going to U.S. installations and American inspectors operating on Soviet territory. A third category of nuclear arms so-called battlefield or tactical missiles has not been subject to negotiations. The West German government, with support from several North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, has urged the United States to negotiate reductions or even total elimination of the ground-based missiles with Moscow. But the U.S.

position is that the missiles should be improved and are essential to the defense of Western Europe. Short-range nuclear weapons have a range of under 300 miles. SCIENCE als but we have said it is important certain aspects should be clarified Swedes Claim Cold-Fusion Success STOCKHOLM Swedish physicists said today that they produced a burst of neutron radiation in a room -temperature experiment, repeating the work of two chemists who claimed to have achieved cold fusion in ajar. The scientists at Manne Siegbahn Institute for Physics said their method was similar to the experiment that chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann said they conducted at the University of Utah. In March, the two claimed to have produced sustained fusion in ajar at much colder temperatures than previously thought possible.

Repeated attempts by other scientists to duplicate the Fleischmann -Pons experiments have had mixed results. and fleshed out," the spokesman said. Britain recently upgraded its re lations with the Palestine Liberation Organization but Shamir at his open coverage, but Wright said he welcomed the chance to have his news conference rejected the idea of direct talks with the PLO. side of the story presented. DEATHS Crash Kills Sex-Changed Combat Pilot Karen Ulane De Groote, Van Cliburn Winner, Dies JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-South African concert pianist Steven de Groote, a Van Cliburn award winner who was an artist in residence at Texas Christian University, has died in a Johannesburg hospital.

He was 36. His family said De Groote had been hospitalized with liver I. 'sv -fit I and respiratory ailments since shortly after his May 7 return to South Africa from Texas. He died in a Johannesburg clinic Monday. A news release from Texas Christian in Ft.

Worth attributed his death to a liver inflammation. The release said De Groote left Ft. Worth two wppWs atm tn visit ha 'Still a Gap' Between U.S., W. Germany Over Missiles From United Press International WASHINGTON-Secretary of State James A. Baker III said today "there is still a gap" between the United States and West Germany over short-range nuclear missiles that may not be resolved in time for the NATO summit.

At a White House news conference less than a week before the start of a potentially discordant summit, Baker indicated that discussions were continuing to close the rift, but he would not predict success. "There is still a gap between their position and our position. We're not there yet," Baker said. "I can't tell you that we know it will be resolved. It is not resolved.

There is still a gap to bridge and we continue to work to try and bridge that gap." Baker's comments came as the Administration weighed a written response from Chancellor Helmut Kohl to a U.S. counterproposal to link negotiations with the Soviet Union over limiting the short-range nuclear weapons to an actual reduction in conventional arms. At the same time, Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens announced that his country will stick to its demand for earlier negotiations on the short-range weapons, buttressing the position of West Germany. Baker said he did not believe that the issue would overshadow the allied meeting if unresolved. "I just don't think it will totally dominate the summit," he said.

I family in South Africa. I I De Groote also was to perform in From Associated Press DE KALB, Ulane, a decorated Vietnam combat pilot who was fired by Eastern Airlines after a sex-change operation in 1980, was killed in the crash of a World War II -vintage charter plane. She was 48. Ulane, known until her surgery as Kenneth Ulane, was at the controls when the twin-propeller DC-3 owned by an air taxi and cargo service crashed and burned in a field near here Monday. Two others aboard were killed.

Ulane had a sex-change operation and hormone treatments in 1980 after 12 years with Eastern. The airline fired her, citing possible safety hazards in stressful situations. U.S. District Judge John F. Grady ordered reinstatement and $158,590 in back pay and other expenses in 1983.

An appeals court disagreed and reversed the decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1985 let the appellate ruling stand. Ulane eventually received a settlement from Eastern that was 1 1 three concerts before returning to Texas later this week. The musician left South Africa to study in Brussels and with Rudolph Serkin at the Curtis Steven de Groote Karen Ulane Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He gained international fame by winning the fifth Van Cliburn international competition in 1977.

De Groote's performing and teaching career was interrupted in 1985 by a near-fatal plane crash in Arizona that left him in a body cast for 10 months. From Times wire services "substantially more" than the amount ordered by Grady, said her attorney, Dean Dickie. Survivors include a son from a marriage while she was Kenneth Ulane. i.