World Notes

NEW ZEALAND Sabotage Sinks a Protest Ship

"We don't know what happened," said Peter Willcox, skipper of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior. "There were some loud bangs, the boat shook and we sank within four minutes." The 130-ft. converted trawler was berthed in Auckland, New Zealand, last week, preparing to lead a protest of French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, 700 miles southeast of Tahiti. Two explosions ripped a 6-ft. by 8-ft. hole in the hull, scuttling the vessel stern first in 24 ft. of water and killing Ship Photographer Fernando Pereira. The twelve other people reportedly on board escaped unharmed.

Auckland police said the explosions were detonated "on the outside of the hull in the area of the engine room." New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange called the bombing a "major criminal act." Lange, who has banned port calls by nuclear-armed or -powered ships, said he would consider sending a New Zealand naval vessel to lead the Mururoa protest. The Rainbow Warrior was one of four ships used by Greenpeace, an international environmentalist group. "Our actions are all peaceful," said Bryn Jones, chairman of the organization's British branch. "We have not in the past provoked this kind of response."

ARGENTINA Meaty Matters with Britain

Before its 1982 war with Britain over the Falkland Islands, Argentina shipped corned beef, lumber and other goods worth more than $133 million annually to the United Kingdom. But since the war, a British embargo on Argentine imports has outlawed trade between the nations. Last week, as he embarked on a three-day visit to Brazil, Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe told the House of Commons that Britain had decided unilaterally to lift the trade embargo. Howe, whose announcement coincided with the anniversary of last year's unsuccessful efforts to renew relations with Argentina, urged the government of President Raul Alfonsin to join with Britain in new trade agreements.

Howe's announcement drew immediate applause from Argentina's meat-packers, who have lost their lucrative British markets to Brazil. But Argentine Foreign Minister Dante Caputo responded that trade talks could begin in 60 days only if the agenda also includes his country's claim to Las Malvinas, as Argentina calls the Falklands. In London, a Foreign Office spokesman called Caputo's reaction "disappointing," adding, "Our position has been set out many times. There is no possibility of our negotiating or discussing sovereignty."

SRI LANKA Peace Talks and Terror Tactics

After more than two years of civil strife that has led to some 2,000 deaths, tentative steps were taken last week toward a settlement between Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist movements and the government of President Junius Jayewardene. Under pressure from India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the island nation's warring factions began peace talks in Thimbu, capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Shortly afterward the government, which is dominated by Sri Lanka's 70% majority of Sinhalese Buddhists, lifted nighttime curfews imposed on five northern districts heavily populated by Tamil-speaking Hindus. The government also released 643 of 1,197 Tamil prisoners who had been arrested under an antiterrorism law.

A day later an attempt to assassinate Jayewardene was reported. Police said they seized a van containing more than 260 lbs. of explosives in the vicinity of the President's office. Two Tamil youths were arrested and identified as members of the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students, one of five separatist groups participating in the Thimbu conference. A spokesman for Gandhi denounced the assassination attempt and urged both sides "to exercise maximum restraint at this delicate stage."

ITALY "Slanderous Accusations"

The confrontation last week came on the 17th day of Mehmet Ali Agca's rambling testimony against seven men he says conspired with him to shoot Pope John Paul II in 1981. In his first testimony in the Rome courtroom, Bulgarian Defendant Sergei Antonov flatly denied that he drove gunmen to St. Peter's Square for the assassination attempt. Furthermore, Antonov asserted, he had "never met the person who accuses me."

The onetime manager of the Bulgarian airline's Rome office, Antonov, 37, has been under house arrest since 1982. He stated, "For two years and seven months I have been away from my homeland, my family, my friends, my colleagues because of [these] absurd, slanderous accusations." Agca retorted that the Bulgarian "has conducted a purely political speech to touch the sentiments of this courtroom."

Italian authorities may soon hear from another defendant in the conspiracy trial. Turkish police last week arrested Bekir Celenk, a Turk whom Agca has accused of helping arrange the plot against the Pope. Until his reappearance in Ankara, Celenk, a reputed smuggler, had been secluded in Bulgaria since at least 1982.

WEST GERMANY Prison for the Hitler Forger

His bravado undiminished, Konrad Kujau, confessed forger of the notorious Hitler diaries, awaited the verdict of a Hamburg court by scrawling facsimiles of the Fuehrer's signature. Kujau's mood grew more somber when Judge Hans-Ulrich Schroeder declared him guilty, along with former Stern magazine Reporter Gerd Heidemann, of defrauding Stern of $3.8 million between 1981 and 1983. The German weekly had purchased 60 volumes of the phony diaries in what it billed as the "scoop of the post-World War II era."

Last week's verdicts ended an eleven-month trial in which Heidemann claimed that he had been misled by Kujau, a dealer in Nazi memorabilia. The court believed but had no concrete evidence to show that Heidemann had kept almost half the money. The journalist drew a prison term of 56 months for fraud. Kujau was sentenced to 54 months for fraud and forgery. Both were freed pending an appeal. The judge criticized Stern for the "bunker mentality" that encouraged editors to print their "scoop" without first establishing the diaries' authenticity.