September 7, 1991

Nearly half a century and at least 1,000 executions since it last happened in the United States, a white person was executed yesterday for killing a black. Donald (Peewee) Gaskins was put to death in Columbia, S.C., early yesterday for the 1982 hired killing of Rudolph Tyner, a fellow inmate and a black man who had himself been convicted of murder. The son of Mr. Tyner's victims hired Mr. Gaskins to kill Mr. Tyner, which he did by giving him a bomb disguised as a radio.

A bitter political fight took shape today in Washington as Israel and some of its Congressional supporters ignored President Bush's appeal to delay a request for $10 billion in loan guarantees to help settle Soviet Jews and made clear that they would push for quick Congressional approval. Hours before the Israeli Ambassador, Zalman Shoval, delivered the Israeli request to Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d, President Bush took the unusual step of summoning reporters into the Oval Office to announce that he would ask Congress not to act on the Israeli appeal for 120 days so that it would only be dealt with after the opening of a proposed Arab-Israeli peace conference scheduled for October. Senate Committee Divided "It is in the best interest of the peace process and of peace itself that consideration of this absorption aid question for Israel be deferred for simply 120 days," Mr. Bush told reporters. "And I think the American people will strongly support me in this. I'm going to fight for it because I think this is what the American people want, and I'm going to do absolutely everything I can to back those members of the United States Congress who are forward-looking in their desire to see peace."

The Soviet Union's new ruling council recognized the independence of the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, today at its first meeting. The move formally freed the three small republics, which were incorporated forcibly into the Soviet Union in 1940 but renewed their drive for independence in the era of glasnost. Their campaign was bitterly resisted by Moscow until last month, when central controls unraveled in the wake of the failed coup and a procession of foreign governments granted the Baltics diplomatic recognition.

With Latvia now recognized by Moscow as an independent state, people here are engaged in an active debate over who among them should qualify for citizenship. It is a complex question fraught with political, historical and even philosophical tension.

The astronauts aboard the Soviet space station Mir, having journeyed weightless for the past 18 days above coup, counter-coup and constitutional crisis, beamed down an urgent question today about just how much political disintegration has been taking place below them. "Is it true that the Russian federation plans to sell the space station Mir?" one astronaut asked the home office. He was rocketed aloft four months ago, when the Soviet Union was really something and even included the three Baltic republics.