What was going on when I was born?

An American diplomat was kidnapped at gunpoint here today by a carload of unidentified gunmen outside his apartment building as he was leaving for work. No group immediately claimed responsibility. Witnesses and American officials said the diplomat, William F. Buckley, first secretary in the United States Embassy's political section, was forced out of his car, a beige Honda, at gunpoint at about 7:30 this morning and was bundled into the abductors' white Renault. ''The whole thing took three minutes,'' said Mohammed Moussa, the superintendent of the apartment building where Mr. Buckley lived. American officials later received reports that the Renault had been seen speeding south down the coastal highway.

Mayor Koch announced yesterday that New York City had rejected a revision of its rent-stabilization code that tenant groups said would have substantially weakened their rights. The Mayor said tenants and landlords had been unable to cooperate in deciding how the code, a highly technical 75-page set of rules and regulations, should be altered. ''It's a victory for reasonableness and common sense,'' Mr. Koch said in announcing the decision at City Hall. ''I think it's fairer.''

Edwin Meese 3d said today that critics of his nomination to be Attorney General were making ''false and misleading statements.'' He added, ''I have engaged in no improper conduct.'' In a statement Mr. Meese, President Reagan's counselor, sent the Senate Meese statement, page 10. Judiciary Committee, which is considering his nomination, he urged his critics to wait until he could explain his activities when he returns, probably next week, to testify before the committee again.

Congressional officials said today that President Reagan agreed to reduce his military budget request only after Senate Republican leaders committed themselves to making no further cuts. The reduction that Mr. Reagan and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger accepted Thursday as part of an attempt to reduce the Federal budget deficits came to $57 billion over three years. This would leave the military budget at $1,004 billion over the next three years, as against the $1,061 billion initially sought by the Administration. A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget said that if the compromise was adopted by Congress, it would set the military budget at $299 billion in the fiscal year 1985, a 7.8 percent increase over the 1984 level, after making up for the effects of inflation.

Mozambique and South Africa, bitter ideological adversaries, signed a nonaggression treaty today, promising to withhold support for one another's internal foes. It was the first such pact between South Africa and a black-ruled African country. The agreement was signed by President Samora M. Machel of Mozambique and Prime Minister P. W. Botha of South Africa in the humid no-man's land between their two countries, under a white pavilion in a makeshift city of military tents by the Komati River. It represented a major diplomatic victory for South Africa in its campaign against the African National Congress, and an acknowledgment by Mozambique of Pretoria's military and economic ability to impose its will. Setback for Rebels It also meant a severe setback for the African National Congress, the most prominent of the exiled groups fighting South Africa's policies of apartheid, or racial separation, from bases in Mozambique, and for the Mozambique National Resistance, a South African- supported group fighting President Machel's avowedly Marxist regime.

The number of uniformed workers in New York City's Sanitation Department has reached what the department says may be the lowest level in 30 or 40 years. One result of the manpower decline has been dirtier streets, a condition Mayor Koch recently acknowledged. The department now has 6,520 workers. There were 11,164 workers on the force in 1971, the earliest year for which records were immediately available. Since then, the number has dropped almost steadily, reaching its lowest point three days ago.

The Department of Agriculture reported today that it had paid American banks $431 million since last May to make good on Government guarantees of loans to four countries. The countries - Brazil, Rumania, Peru asnd Morocco - fell into arrears on the loans last year. Until now, the only coutry officially reported to have defaulted was Poland, which owes the Governament $1.4 billion. Except for the Polish loans, on which all negotiation has ceased, the loans have all been rescheduled, with payments stretched out over five years or more. Because Washington has made good on its guarantees, the rescheduled payments will be made to the Government, not the banks.

Walter F. Mondale is looking to Democratic caucuses in Michigan and four other states Saturday for a weekend surge to lift his chances going into the Illinois primary next Tuesday. The big prize in the Saturday contests is Michigan, where organized labor and Democratic elected officials are working furiously to deliver the first major industrial state on the 1984 political calendar to Mr. Mondale's column in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who has won almost three times as many primaries and caucuses as Mr. Mondale so far but still trails him in the number of convention delegates, is playing down his chances here, even though a recent poll by The Detroit News shows him within seven percentage points of the former Vice President. Facing tough primary battles in Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, Mr. Mondale is counting on a victory in Michigan, where Saturday's caucuses will allocate 136 delegates, and strong showings in smaller caucuses in South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas and Kentucky to continue the comeback he began last Tuesday with victories in the Alabama and Georgia primaries. Mississippi will allocate 36 delegates, and Arkansas 35. In South Carolina, where some Democrats are pressing caucus-goers to elect mostly uncommitted delegates, the results could be less than a clear victory for Mr. Mondale, Mr. Hart or the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a native of the state. South Carolina will allocate 41 convention seats.

For a gorgeous city, Nice seems to make people speak badly of it. For a place whose bay shines with a dozen gradations of blue, for a town where the early morning smells are still of flowers and the sea, the line on Nice can be hard. Nietzsche, who lived here a century ago, spake cruelly of the city, the locals recall, describing the citizenry as rapacious. The Scottish novelist Tobias Smolett, they remember, gave Nice low marks as well. Graham Greene, who has a house nearby, brought things up to date a few years ago, writing an accusatory pamphlet in which City Hall, the police and the Nice establishment came off as crooks and thugs. Until recently, most of the complaints were made by ''foreigners'' from up north, people said here to be so rigid, so frozen of spirit as to mistake Mediterranean tolerance, solidarity and pace for plotting, or clannishness, or sloth. When they could, the Ni,cois would strike back: the plaque at Nietzsche's house, now a cut-rate furniture store, describes him as a ''tormented genius'' just passing through.

The Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, said today that the Communist authorities wanted ''good relations with the Roman Catholic Church,'' but he warned against political activity under church banners. Opening a national conference of Communist Party members, the general, who is Prime Minister and party leader, did not directly mention the confrontation between church and state over the removal of crucifixes from public schools. But he appeared to be trying to defuse the situation by saying: ''Neither the state nor the church needs a conflict. It would only suit Poland's enemies, and would bring our country irreparable losses.''

The United States formally notified the Soviet Union today that it was suspending a 1982 agreement under which the ambassadors of the two countries were permitted to travel to and from the respective capitals aboard special flights. The action was taken after the Soviet Foreign Ministry denied a third request this year by the United States Ambassador, Arthur A. Hartman. Mr. Hartman, en route to Washington for consultations, had notified the ministry that he proposed to leave Moscow for West Germany on Monday aboard a special aircraft flown by a United States military crew. The Soviet officials who informed the embassy of the latest refusal had indicated that the veto on special flights was in retaliation for the United States action last September when Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko was denied permission to fly in a special Aeroflot plane to Kennedy International Airport in New York. Mr. Gromyko, who was to have attended the United Nations General Asembly, declined an alternative arrangement under which he would have traveled aboard a Soviet military aircraft, landing at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact today resumed the negotiations on troop reductions in Central Europe that were suspended last December as part of a Soviet protest over the deployment of American medium-range missiles. The resumption of the talks in a Baroque Hapsburg palace that has housed them for a decade seemed to be a psychological lift for some European nations that are concerned about the deterioration of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. But diplomats from both sides quickly cautioned against expecting a breakthrough. At a news conference, Krzysztof Stronczynski, a Polish delegate who spoke for the Warsaw Pact, chastised the NATO side for not having used what he portrayed as an extended break to come up with a fresh position to match an Eastern draft agreement put forward last summer.