Luxembourg Government

The Luxembourg government will create the new multinational company next month with the aim of launching a European communications satellite in mid-1986, a government spokesman said. A number of firms already have agreed to participate in the project, which will beam up to 16 channels over most of Europe. None will be able to take more than a 10% share, thus assuaging fears that the company could become dominated by any single firm, particularly a U.S. corporation.

Luxembourg's Grand Duke Jean will step down as regent of the European Union's smallest and wealthiest state Saturday, abdicating in favor of his eldest son, 45-year-old Henri. The hand-over is more about continuity than change for a tiny nation that has carved out a place for itself between more powerful neighbors. Luxembourg has a constitutional monarchy, requiring the grand duke to sign bills into law and giving him the power to dissolve parliament.

Luxembourg's Grand Duke Jean will step down as regent of the European Union's smallest and wealthiest state Saturday, abdicating in favor of his eldest son, 45-year-old Henri. The hand-over is more about continuity than change for a tiny nation that has carved out a place for itself between more powerful neighbors. Luxembourg has a constitutional monarchy, requiring the grand duke to sign bills into law and giving him the power to dissolve parliament.

The Luxembourg government will create the new multinational company next month with the aim of launching a European communications satellite in mid-1986, a government spokesman said. A number of firms already have agreed to participate in the project, which will beam up to 16 channels over most of Europe. None will be able to take more than a 10% share, thus assuaging fears that the company could become dominated by any single firm, particularly a U.S. corporation.

Luxembourg today announced that its ambassador to NATO has resigned and a senior government official said U.S. intelligence suspected that he had passed information to Moscow. "The CIA has information that he may have given some sort of security information to officials in Moscow," the senior official said. The ambassador, Guy De Muyser, 64, a former ambassador to Moscow, had been ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and to Belgium since March 10, 1986.

The Luxembourg government said it plans to impose harsh penalties for money laundering, a move that follows the indictment by the United States of a bank based here on charges of cleansing drug money. A spokesman for Prime Minister Jacques Santer's office said the new law, which the government hopes to rush through parliament, aims to protect Luxembourg's image as a financial center in the face of a worldwide flood of drug money. "We have to prevent that money being placed here," he said.

Gaston Thorn, 78, a former prime minister of Luxembourg and ex-president of the European Commission, died Sunday in Brussels, a government official announced. No cause of death was immediately provided. It was also not clear whether he had died at home or at a hospital, according to a spokeswoman for Luxembourg's government press service who spoke on condition of anonymity.

As a result of what is generally considered Dutch diplomatic ineptness, a new European Community treaty on political union has been dealt a serious setback. "The Dutch tried to expand on an earlier draft," commented one EC official. "But they got it wrong, and now three months have been lost." EC ministers have been cobbling together draft versions of treaties on political and monetary union, which would amend the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the constitution for the original Common Market countries.

Clay T. "Tom" Whitehead, who helped the cable TV industry flourish by bringing competition to the domestic satellite market in the early 1970s, died of prostate cancer July 23 at Georgetown University Hospital. He was 69. During the Nixon administration, Whitehead became the country's first telecommunications policy advisor and championed free markets in the satellite business.

Former drug agent Darnell Garcia, speaking out publicly for the first time in a federal corruption trial that rocked the Drug Enforcement Administration, took the stand Thursday and denied government allegations that he stole seized narcotics and cash. Garcia produced his personal calendar books--beginning with the year 1982, when the government alleges that the scandal began--which contain detailed daily notations that the defendant and his attorneys believe contravene key prosecution evidence.

One-time fugitive Darnell Garcia, the former U.S. narcotics agent who is a principal defendant in a major drug corruption scandal, has been quietly extradited to Los Angeles from Luxembourg, The Times learned Sunday. Garcia, his hands and legs shackled and dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, was turned over to five U.S. marshals by Luxembourg police Friday, according to Mark Pirtle, one of the marshals who accompanied Garcia on the trip back to Los Angeles.

Fifteen years ago, the Netherlands was a European economic basket case. Heavy public spending burdened its economy. Unemployment registered 12%. Generous government checks supported a million work-disabled people, many of them only nominally so. Today, the old Dutch trading nation has shaken the welfare-state doldrums and created--or re-created--a niche for itself as a low-cost, high-productivity, outward-looking player in a global-minded Europe.