War Averted

By "the Vatican Kissinger

The Vatican's Cardinal Antonio Samore, 73, left Buenos Aires for Rome last week to report to Pope John Paul II on "the little that I have done." Actually, he had done quite a lot. After a fortnight of shuttle diplomacy, Samore had pretty well averted the danger of war between Argentina and Chile. At the close of a meeting in nearby Montevideo, Uruguay, the Argentine government of President Jorge Rafael Videla and the Chilean junta of President Augusto Pinochet signed an agreement in which they promised not to use force against each other, pledged to reduce the military buildup along their 2,600-mile border, and asked the Pope to mediate the outstanding dispute between them.

That dispute concerns the area around three rocky little islands in the Beagle Channel,*at the tip of South America. Since 1881, Chile has more or less controlled the islands and Argentina has claimed them. As long ago as 1896, the two countries called on Queen Victoria to settle the matter, but when she ruled in favor of Chile, the angry Argentines balked. In 1977 an international tribunal appointed by the British government supported Chile's claim, and once again the Argentines objected. So last month, amid threats of war, the two strongly Catholic countries accepted Pope John Paul II s offer to send a special envoy.

Cardinal Samore attacked his special assignment with what a U.S. diplomat in Buenos Aires called "the tenacity of a bulldog." In 15 days, he spent 60 hours in conferences and 56 hours in the air, earning himself the nickname ' the Vatican Kissinger."

If the Pope manages to settle the Beagle affair, he may find himself saddled with more chores of the same kind. Bolivia wants him to persuade Chile to return Bolivia's access to the sea, which Chile seized in the 1880s. And then there is that little matter in the Middle East..

*Named for the ship that carried British Naturalist Charles Darwin on his 1831-36 voyage.

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