May 16, 1981

''He is a psychopath with no defined ideology,'' the Istanbul security chief said today of Mehmet Ali Agca, the 23-year-old Turk who is under arrest in Rome on charges of shooting Pope John Paul II. But a former Cabinet minister said that Mr. Agca had appeared ''normal'' and had spoken of having an ''organization'' when he was arrested in 1979 for the murder of a Turkish editor. The minister suggested that Mr. Agca was still a militant terrorist linked to international right-wing organizations. These represented the main views of Mr. Agca as senior officials pondered the attempt to assassinate the Pope in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday.

The United States said today that it was sending its special envoy, Philip C. Habib, to Saudi Arabia tomorrow to seek help in averting a Syrian-Israeli clash over the presence of Syrian antiaircraft missiles in southern Lebanon. Israel has said that if diplomatic means fail to bring about removal of the missiles it will destroy them. Senior Reagan Administration officials said a military confrontation could erupt as early as next week. Because of this concern, the State Department ordered the American Embassy in Beirut to accelerate what has been a slow evacuation of dependents from Lebanon and also to advise Americans there in nonofficial capacities to leave. Some dependents have been quietly leaving in the last week or so, it was reported.

President Reagan discussed African issues today with Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha of South Africa in a meeting described as ''friendly'' by a White House spokesman. Mr. Botha's meeting with the President was announced late yesterday after talks between the South African and Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. apparently made progress on a long-delayed plan to establish an independent nation of Namibia in the territory of South-West Africa, now administered by South Africa. Mr. Reagan also received an invitation today from President Nicolae Ceaucescu of Rumania to make an official visit to his country . The invitation was delivered to the President during a 10-minute meeting with the Rumanian Foreign Minister, Stefan Andrei. Mr. Reagan told Mr. Andrei that he could not give an immediate answer but that he hoped ''very much'' that he could accept at a later date.

The Police Department will assign lawyers to the Manhattan District Attorney's office starting Monday to find out why it reduces 50 percent of the arrests made on felony charges to misdemeanor cases. In the past, city police officials and Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney, have engaged in some public disputes, each side blaming the other for the gap between the number of felony arrests made by the police and the smaller number of felony complaints brought by the prosecutor's office. Mr. Morgenthau said yesterday that he welcomed the new project, which will have two or three police lawyers assigned to his office for 30 to 60 days. The lawyers will be monitoring cases in which the police have made felony arrests that have immediately been reduced to a misdemeanor charges.

The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Film Corporation is buying United Artists, one of the world's largest film distribution networks, for $225 million to $250 million in cash, film industry sources said yesterday. The price to be paid to the Transamerica Corporation involves $250 million in cash and the baalance in ssix-year notes, the sources said. M-G-M will thus acquire not only the company that haas been distributing its movies under contract, but also the huge United Artists film library, going back to the early days of the film industry. United Artists is the film distribution and entertainment company founded just prior to the 1920's by Mr. Fairbanks, Miss Pickford and Mr. Chaplin, along with D. W. Griffith, the motion picture director. In more recent times, much to its embarrassment, it has become known as the company that financed the film ''Heaven's Gate,'' Michael Cimino's box-office disaster.