The World - News from Aug. 21, 1988

President Lazarus Salii of Palau was found shot to death in his home, but it was not immediately clear if he had killed himself or was murdered. A police officer in Koror, the capital, at first said an unknown gunman had fired the shot, but a government spokesman said later that a gun had been found and that suicide had not been ruled out. Salii, 54, is the second president to die by gunfire in this Pacific island chain, 4,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, which has been administered by the United States since World War II. Salii was elected in August, 1985, to succeed Haruo Remeliik, the country’s first elected president, who was shot to death in June of that year.