May 27, 1985

A major courtroom trial that could throw light on obscure links of international terrorism begins here Monday when five Turks and three Bulgarians face charges they took part in a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The trial has special significance because two Bulgarian diplomats and an official of the Bulgarian state airline are among the accused. According to the state's key witness, they were part of a conspiracy that led to the attempt on the Pope's life in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, and Italian justice officials say circumstantial evidence supports the charge. The witness, Mehmet Ali Agca, who is now 27 years old, is serving a life sentence in a Rome prison after his conviction in July 1981 of having shot and seriously wounded the Pope during his weekly general audience. During his trial, Mr. Agca, who was seized in St. Peter's Square, the site of the shooting, claimed to have acted alone. He later changed his testimony, saying that the assassination attempt was a result of an international plot, masterminded by the Bulgarian diplomats, in which he received the equivalent of $1.2 million from a Turkish underworld figure living in Bulgaria.

Tommy Swan says he has been hearing it since he was a small boy: how the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was going to turn the local economy around and bring jobs and people to this poor quarter of eastern Mississippi. Now, after decades of Congressional scrutiny and sharp public controversy, the $2 billion waterway, completed last December, is to be formally dedicated in ceremonies next week across eastern Mississippi and western Alabama. It links the Tennessee River, in northeast Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico, at Mobile, Ala., through a 234-mile long system of locks and canals along the Tombigbee River. ''We waited a long time for it to be built, and I suppose we're going to have to wait some more for the full impact to take hold,'' said Mr. Swan, 57 years old, who owns Tommy's Men's Wear on Main Street. Other stores, left behind by time and the local economy are empty now. ''But the jobs will come -they will come in time.''

The death toll from a cyclone that sent huge waves crashing into the islands of southeastern Bangladesh rose to at least 1,400 today, and officials and survivors said they feared that many more may have perished. One official said the final toll could be in the tens of thousands, including large groups of migrant workers who had flocked to exposed islands to take part in the rice harvest. Several islands in the Bay of Bengal were reported to have been washed away in the cyclone Saturday, which created waves 10 to 15 feet high. 'Beyond Description' ''The devastation in the area is beyond description,'' said Lieut. Gen. H. M. Ershad, the country's President. General Ershad spoke after returning to Dhaka from the island of Sandwip, where he distributed food, clothing and medicine to survivors. He set out in a helicopter but had to complete the journey to Sandwip by sea because of strong winds.

Shiite Moslem fighters in West Beirut have begun killing large numbers of Palestinians from two refugee settlements, according to accounts by witnesses and other reports from the scene. The accounts that are emerging from Beirut come from Palestinians who have escaped the fighting and sought refuge elsewhere in Beirut, witnesses at the scene, medical personnel in several hospitals, Western diplomats and Moslem residents in several sectors of West Beirut. The reports could not be independently confirmed because journalists and the Red Cross were not able to enter the contested area. At Least 250 Reported Dead At least 250 Palestinians, both guerrillas and civilians, have been reported killed in the refugee settlements, Sabra and Shatila. But the total is feared to be much higher.

Four years have passed since a team of business executives went into New York City's bus and subway systems to conduct the most comprehensive study to date of how the Transit Authority functioned and how it could be improved. Finding a sluggish and poorly coordinated agency, with records kept in ledger books, storerooms full of defective parts and monthlong delays in answering letters, the executives recommended nearly 400 specific changes. Officially, the authority accepted most of the recommendations. But interviews with Transit Authority officials and workers and an examination of records found that most of the deficiencies the executives saw in 1981 were never corrected. Management Problems Behind the problems that confront the rider every day - late trains, dirty stations and graffiti-covered buses -lie problems of management that make the Transit Authority an agency that is unsure what it has in its storerooms and that still keeps many records on index cards.