LONDON, Jan.9— Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine resigned today, charging Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with perverting Britains system of collective Cabinet government and willfully manipulating a defense decision of “profound” importance.

Heseltine’s surprise resignation was viewed here as the most serious political crisis of Thatcher’s 6 years in office, and provided a unusually open look at dissension within a government that has been fiercely protective of the secrecy of its decision-making process.

The immediate cause of Heseltine’s departure was a dispute over rival bids to take over a major share of Britain’s ailing Westland Helicopter by the U.S. manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft and a consortium of Western European companies.

Underlying today’s events are larger issues involving long-circulating reports of dissatisfaction among some Cabinet members who object to Thatcher’s style of leadership which has been described as autocratic and authoritarian.

“To serve as a member of a Tory Cabinet within the constitutional understandings and practices of a system under which the prime minister is primus inter pares (first among equals) is a memory I will always treasure,” Heseltine said today at a news conference, “But if the basis of trust between the secretary no longer exists, there is no place for me with honor in such a Cabinet,” he said.

NEW DELHI, India—

A leopard attacked 11 people in an Indian village before it was killed the Press Trust of India said Friday.

The domestic news agency said the incident occurred Thursday in the village of Hingoda in the western Gujarat state, 500 miles southwest of New Delhi, but gave no further details.

“People breathed a sigh of relief on learning of the killing” the Press Trust said. It said the leopard “had created a terror among them.”

Leopards are an endangered species in India, although efforts to increase their numbers by setting aside wildlife reserves have doubled their population to more than 4,000 since 1972.

GENEVA— Soviet authorities allowed 92 Jews to emigrate in December, bringing to 1,141 the number of Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union in 1985, the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration reported Friday.

The total of 1,141 was slightly lower than last year as Soviet Union continued to severely restrict the emigration of Soviet Jews.

Monthly arrivals at the ICM reception camp in Vienna in 1985 ranged from a high of 174 in July to a low of 29 in August, The figure of 29 was the lowest monthly number of arrivals since the TCM began its program for Soviet Jews in 1971.

In 1971, Moscow let 12,680 Jewish nationals leave the country.

AYACUCHO, Peru— Machete wielding leftist rebels hacked to death two peasants in an Andean village who refused to join their insurgency, police said Friday.

The peasants, activists in President Alan Garcias ruling party were killed in the village of Huayara, 110 miles south of Ayacucho police said.

A group of rebels, presumably guerrillas from the Maoist Shining Pth group, pulled Mateo Valenzuela and his wife, Eulosia Crisostomo, from their house and hacked them to death before neighbors, police said.

After murdering the peasants, the rebels put a sign on the bodies saying, “Killed for opposing the popular struggle”

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