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When a battered suitcase showed up on First Avenue near 42nd Street yesterday morning moments after a demonstration in support of Nicaragua, the Police Department decided not to take any chances.
"We had to treat it like a bomb. A lot of motorcades turn here," said Assistant Police Chief Gerard J. Kerins, who is coordinating the extensive security measures for the 40th anniversary meeting of the United Nations.
Police cordoned off a couple of blocks. The bomb squad arrived and dispatched its robot to inspect the luggage. The robot lifted the suitcase and out fell a homeless man's clothes.
"The robot did a real good job of unpacking," an unidentified officer said.
Every trash receptacle and mailbox vanished several days ago along First Avenue near the United Nations. They are easy places to conceal bombs.
This extraordinary security measure caused hardship for at least one person, a well-dressed man walking his sheep dog about 7:30 a.m.
"Well, what do I do with this?" he said to a young police officer as he held out something wrapped neatly in a piece of newspaper.
"What does this say," the police officer asked as she pointed to her shoulder patch. "Sanitation?"
At the First Ladies Conference on Drug Abuse at the UN yesterday, Nancy Reagan and the wives of 30 other world leaders heard about the effects of drug use from a former punk rocker.
"When the drugs I was taking no longer gave me all the security I needed, I began to take heroin," said Andrew Fowler of London, who gave up drugs and the counterculture 14 months ago and now looks very much the part of a clean-cut, 23-year-old gentleman.
In her remarks, Reagan said, "Mother to mother, we've gathered to combat the terror striking every nation."
Just as the women were leaving for a lunch, Sri Lanka's first lady, Hema Premadasa, caught the group off guard with an unscheduled statement.
She suggested the women take some concrete action, such as running a model program, and hold their next conference in a developing country, preferably in Asia. "For your {industrialized} nations, the drug menace is a tragedy," she said. "I am from a poor developing nation. For ours, and those like us, the drug menace...