Papal shooter had plotted to kill Mintoff in Tunisia

Papal assailant Mehmet Ali Agca had admitted to have been sent by Bulgarian agents in 1980 - acting on behalf of the Soviet KGB - to Tunisia to scout out the possibility of an assassination attempt against the late Maltese Prime Minister Dom Mintoff and Tunisian President Habib Bourghiba.

Today's editon of 'Illum' newspaper reveals how Agca had told investigators about the Tunisian trip taken six months before the May 13, 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II.

But in court he said he had been sent by the Bulgarians and had been met at the airport by a man whom Agca refused to identify other than saying he appeared to be a Syrian.

Agca, the star prosecution witness, was testifying in the trial of three Bulgarians and four Turks charged with complicity in the papal assassination attempt. Agca testified that Soviet diplomats in Bulgaria ordered the pontiff killed and offered a reward worth US$1.2 million.

The then 27-year-old Turk said he and the other man went to Bourguiba's villa in Carthage, just outside Tunis, and examined possibilities for a bomb attack against the president's motorcade.

He said there was a nearby hotel that allowed them to examine the whole area but they decided against the attack because security was too tight and the suspicion that Tunisian security had them under observation.

Judge Severino Santiapichi asked Agca how he knew what to do in Tunisia and Agca replied, ''Vassilev Kolev explained it to me.''

He was apparently referring to Lt. Col. Zhelyo Kolev Vassilev, one of the three Bulgarians charged in the case.

Agca had said that he spent from late November until Dec. 12, 1980, in Tunisia. Mintoff was in Tunisia on December 10, 1980 holding talks with Bourguiba.

Agca was asked whether he was armed and responded he was not because he had come by plane. But he added that, ''There wasn't a problem of arms in Tunisia. They were easy to get there.''

Read more in today's edition of the Illum.