June 15, 1985

The United States ordered the recall of its Ambassador from Pretoria today to protest South African military raids into neighboring Botswana this morning and into Angola last month. The South African military moves have raised ''the most serious question about that Government's recent conduct and policy,'' Bernard Kalb, the State Department spokesman, said. He said the United States ''rejects categorically such a policy which is antithetical to the goal of working for negotiated solutions and an end to southern Africa's cycle of violence.'' Low Point of Relations ''In light of this and other recent events,'' Mr. Kalb said, ''we have decided to call our Ambassador to South Africa, Herman Nickel, home on consultations to review the situation.''

Gunmen commandeered a Trans World Airlines jetliner with 104 Americans and 49 other people aboard yesterday and forced it to fly on a twisting course from Athens to Beirut to Algiers, then back to Beirut, where one passenger was shot to death, and again to Algiers. The plane landed at Algeria's Houari Boumedienne airport for the second time during the hijacking at 8:45 this morning (2:45 A.M., New York time), according to Nancy Johnson, a member of a State Department task force in Washington. She said no information was received immediately about the condition of the passengers. The odyssey was filled with moments of terror, but no one appeared to be seriously injured until the plane landed for a second time in Beirut early this morning, Beirut time. There the pilot radioed the control tower and said of one of the hijackers: ''He just killed a passenger! He just killed a passenger!'' 'You Now Believe' A hijacker then got on the radio and told the control tower: ''You see. You now believe. There will be another within five minutes.''

The police said yesterday that they had found witnesses who corroborated a plainclothesman's account of being assaulted before he fatally shot a 17-year-old Harlem youth outside Morningside Park Wednesday night. The plainclothes officer, Lee Van Houten, said he opened fire after two youths jumped him from behind, knocked him down and kicked and pummeled him in an apparent robbery attempt, the police said. But the family of the victim, Edmund E. Perry, and their lawyer asserted that the youth, an honors graduate of a preparatory school, had no reason to commit such a crime. They charged that the shooting was unjustified and racially motivated. Mr. Perry was black; the officer is white. Many people who knew Mr. Perry said they found it inconceivable that a young man who had achieved so much already and had such a bright future could have taken part in a crime.

Two American handwriting experts said tonight that they had positively identified letters found in Brazil as having been written by Josef Mengele, the fugitive Nazi war criminal. The finding, described as ''definite,'' is the first scientific evidence to back up testimony that the former Auschwitz death camp doctor lived in and around Sao Paulo from 1961 until friends say he drowned in 1979. [Josef Mengele's son gave a Munich-based magazine hundreds of photographs, letters and 30 pounds of other documents depicting his father's life on the run, an editor for the magazine said. Page 5.] 'A Thorough Examination'

President Raul Alfonsin announced an ''economy of war'' tonight to bring the country's extraordinarily high inflation rate to a standstill. The program combines the creation of a new currency, wage and price controls and a halt to the Government's deficit spending. ''I come to you now to present the battle plan so that together we will be able to definitely cancel the chapter of national decay,'' Mr. Alfonsin said in a speech he delivered to the nation tonight. ''We do not have any option, we have to reconstruct Argentina.'' In a televised address, Mr. Alfonsin pleaded with the country's 30 million people to support the drastic steps to control the country's inflation rate, which was 1,010 percent in the latest 12 months.