World Notes

SOUTH PACIFIC No Nukes in Paradise

The countries that dot the southern half of the world's largest ocean are known for their peaceful, sand-ringed islands and their sun-drenched coral atolls. But the problems of the nuclear age are intruding on this tranquillity. Last week the 13-nation South Pacific Forum met in Rarotonga, capital of the Cook Islands, to consider a treaty declaring the area between the equator and Antarctica and between Australia and South America a nuclear-free zone. Eight members, including Australia, New Zealand, Western Samoa and tiny Niue (estimated population 3,400), signed the treaty. Four others are expected to ratify the agreement in the near future. Only Vanuatu refused, calling it impractical and ineffective.

The treaty prohibits member nations from acquiring nuclear explosives, testing atomic weapons and dumping nuclear waste. But individual countries will decide whether to allow ships or aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons to cross their territories. New Zealand's ruling Labor Party has refused to allow port calls by nuclear-powered or -armed warships. Last week Prime Minister David Lange said he plans to introduce legislation before the end of the year to make the ban permanent. EL SALVADOR The Bishops' Bleak Warning

The pastoral letter from El Salvador's Roman Catholic bishops was pessimistic. It cited the "grave situation affecting almost all Salvadorans . . . due most of all to the violence of war" and warned of an imminent escalation in the country's six-year civil conflict. The bishops pointed with concern to the "stagnation and deterioration" of the peace talks initiated last October between rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the government of Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte. Concluded the letter: "If the dialogue fails, no other path will remain for El Salvador but total destruction, with a very elevated cost in human lives and a possibly irreparable deterioration of national unity."

The bishops' main concern is that both sides in the conflict now view peace talks as no more than a tactical tool to further their military aims. The Salvadoran army has been gaining ground in the countryside against the Marxist-led FMLN. For their part, the guerrillas have warned that they intend to bring the war back to the streets of San Salvador, the capital. CUBA Castro's Fugitive Guest

Since fleeing the U.S. in 1972, Robert Vesco, 49, has reportedly been in Costa Rica, the Bahamas, Antigua and Nicaragua. Last week Cuban President Fidel Castro confirmed a news report that his country was Vesco's latest host. But Castro ridiculed speculation that the fugitive American financier was being held against his will. Castro told a news conference in Havana that Vesco arrived in Cuba three years ago seeking medical treatment for an unknown ailment. He is wanted in the U.S. in connection with a $224 million fraud case involving Investors Overseas Services Ltd. and for allegedly making an illegal contribution to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential reelection campaign.

Castro claimed to know nothing of Vesco's finances or movements. He charged that the CIA had spread the story about Vesco's hideout, declaring that "they may want to gouge out his eyes, strangle him, make him into ground meat." The Cuban President was especially piqued because the renewed interest in Vesco stole attention from Castro's call for Latin American countries to repudiate their collective foreign debt, which totals some $360 billion. BOLIVIA Sour Smell of Success

The first peaceful constitutional change of government in 25 years should have been a signal event in Bolivian politics. But the way in which the new President was selected cast a pall over last week's inauguration ceremonies for Victor Paz Estenssoro, 77. Paz Estenssoro had narrowly lost the popular vote in the July 14 election to former President Hugo Banzer Suarez, 58. But because neither candidate drew more than 50% of the vote, the final choice was left to Congress. Although both men proposed similarly conservative programs, leftist legislators saw Paz Estenssoro as the lesser of two evils. "We have nothing in common with Paz Estenssoro, but everything separating us from Banzer," said one Congressman.

Paz Estenssoro, who has been elected President three times before, will need all his political skills to defeat an even tougher opponent: Bolivia's ravaged economy. La Paz business groups estimate that the country's annual inflation rate will reach 30,000% this year. One of the new President's first acts was to announce an austerity program that included devaluation of the peso and renegotiation of the country's $4.8 billion foreign debt. ITALY The Mafia's Double Strike

As the white bulletproof Alfa Romeo carrying Antonio Cassar`a, 38, the head of Palermo's homicide squad, turned into the courtyard of the housing complex, Laura Cassar`a waved to her husband from their apartment window. Cassar`a and his two escorts sprinted up the steps leading to the building, but before the policeman could turn the doorknob, three Kalashnikov submachine guns sprayed a flood of bullets from the windows of three floors of a building across the street. Cassar`a and one of his bodyguards died in the fusillade.

The murder last week came only nine days after the killing of Palermo Police Commissioner Giuseppe Montana. Both men had been active in last year's arrest of a Mafia leader who later turned state's evidence. A deeply shocked Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi immediately summoned his top security officials for an emergency meeting. At midweek an 800-man force of police and carabinieri was flown to Palermo. Declared the city's mayor, Luca Orlando: "We cannot cope on our own. Either there is national action against the Mafia, or Palermo and Sicily will be lost."