What was going on when I was born?

Five Central American countries agreed tonight to establish a commission to monitor an accord being negotiated on reducing arms in the region, an international group sponsoring the talks announced. In a communique after two days of meetings, the group described the agreement on a commission as a ''notable advance in the negotiation'' of a regional treaty by the five countries - Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The arms reduction accord would be a major part of that treaty. The agreement tonight gave new life to the two-year-old effort to find a peaceful solution to the turmoil in Central America. The effort, which had been stalled for six months, is being led by the Contadora group - Mexico, Venezuela, Panama and Colombia.

Amid public outcry and legal debate, Gary Dotson went back to state prison this morning to continue serving time for a rape that his accuser now says never happened. The judge who tried the case six years ago, Richard L. Samuels, decided Thursday to reject the recantation by Cathleen Crowell Webb, citing legal precedents and saying he believed her account of the rape and did not believe her now. Mr. Dotson, who was briefly freed on bond after Mrs. Webb came forward, was put in the hospital of the prison in Joliet, Ill., according to Nick Howell, a state corrections spokesman. Mr. Howell said Mr. Dotson was ''distraught'' and would stay in the hospital for the weekend because ''this way, he has easy access to psychiatrists.'' Appeals Are Planned Mrs. Webb said today that she would be willing to stand trial for perjury if that would mean Mr. Dotson's release. ''If a jury could hear the testimony, read the transcript, hear my true story now,'' she said, ''I feel confident they would believe the truth.''

A state judge yesterday dismissed a manslaughter indictment against a police officer who killed a woman with two shotgun blasts after being called to her apartment in the Bronx in an eviction dispute. The judge, Acting Justice Vincent A. Vitale of State Supreme Court, ruled that the evidence was ''legally insufficent'' to indict the officer, Stephen Sullivan, for manslaughter or any other offense in the death of the woman, Eleanor Bumpurs. After reviewing testimony before a grand jury that voted an indictment in January for second-degree manslaughter, Justice Vitale said Officer Sullivan followed the existing Police Department guidelines when he fired twice at the 66-year-old Mrs. Bumpurs last October. Attack With a Kitchen Knife Officer Sullivan, 43, testified before the grand jury in the Bronx that he had to fire two rounds from a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun at Mrs. Bumpurs to protect a fellow officer she was attacking with a kitchen knife. In an interview yesterday after the ruling, the officer said, ''I'm very happy, ecstatic.''

A crew of seven, including a United States Senator wired to a medical experiment, rocketed into orbit today aboard the space shuttle Discovery to deliver two satellites and conduct a variety of scientific tests. The astronauts released a Canadian communications satellite early this evening and plan to deploy a Navy satellite Saturday. The Canadian satellite, Anik C-1, was sent on its course toward a higher equatorial orbit. Commander's Second Mission The mission is commanded by Col. Karol J. Bobko of the Air Force, who is making his second shuttle journey. The most celebrated occupant of the winged spaceship is Senator Jake Garn, Republican of Utah, who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee that oversees the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's budget.

Fifty-one years after he arrived in Russia, the man known to his friends as ''America'' left today to return to what he likes to call the old country, New York City. ''One, two, three, four, five,'' Bernard Lamport counted off the members of his Soviet family this morning as they passed with him into the final customs check at Moscow's main international airport. Somewhere in the 43 pieces of luggage he had sent ahead was a 1934 snapshot of himself at the age of 4, with his parents aboard the liner Bremen as they headed for a new life in the Soviet Union, where they hoped to escape the Depression and help build a new Soviet society. His father worked as a journalist and translator, and their lives were comfortable, Mr. Lamport said, perhaps more comfortable than they would have been in America. But until they died some years ago, his parents maintained a hope of returning home.

The United States and its industrial allies agreed unanimously today to start preparing this summer for a new global round of negotiations to liberalize trade. Most of the finance and trade ministers participating in two days of talks that ended here this evening said they want to see the negotiations started early next year. But France was able to prevent the 24 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from formally setting 1986 as their target for starting the talks, as the Reagan Administration had sought. France has been insisting that the talks be tied to an agreement to stabilize the value of the dollar.

The White House, facing growing protests about a plan by President Reagan to honor German soldiers killed in World War II, said today that a visit to a military cemetery in West Germany was under review. The disclosure came as veterans' groups such as the American Legion joined Jewish organizations in protest against Mr. Reagan's plan to recognize the German war dead. No Visit to Allied Cemetery Mr. Reagan has no similar plans to visit an Allied war cemetery when he goes to Europe next month. What especially stirred anger about the announcement of the visit was that it followed Mr. Reagan's decision several weeks ago not to visit the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.

Representatives of major unions and political parties held a third day of closed-door negotiations with the country's new military leaders, Sudanese officials said today. The talks were said to be concentrating on formation of an interim cabinet and the length of the transition to civilian rule. Early today, a spokesman for the Alliance of Forces for National Salvation, a 14-member civilian coalition of labor groups and political parties, said the ruling Military Council had accepted the alliance's demand that the changeover to civilian rule be no longer than one year and that the cabinet consist of civilians except for the Defense Minister.

While Hend al-Khuthaila was pregnant with her fourth child, she worked full- time as assistant dean of the Women's Center of King Saud University until the day she checked into the hospital to give birth. Now, as the first woman to become dean of the center, and four months pregnant with her fifth child, the 30-year-old Ph.D. from Syracuse University plans to do the same thing. Islam, and the particularly strict Saudi interpretation of it, imposes several restrictions on women. Saudi women are not allowed to drive cars, work with men or travel or live abroad without a man who is a member of the family as chaperon. When they leave their homes, they must cover their heads, arms and legs, and the vast majority cover their faces with veils of black gauze or chiffon.

Sikh leaders announced tonight that they would give the Government until June 1 to respond to the last of their demands. The Sikhs said they had decided to postpone a confrontation with the Government as a response to its decision to meet three of seven demands. ''We give the Government time until June 1 to decide on the remaining demands,'' said a spokesman for the Akali Dal, the principal Sikh opposition party. ''Otherwise, we shall be forced to take the next step.''

Pope John Paul II, speaking a month before important local elections in Italy, has urged this country's Roman Catholics to stand united politically so as to serve ''the supreme good of the nation.'' The Pope's comments were widely interpreted as offering tacit assistance to the long-dominant Christian Democratic Party.

After seeming for years to avoid any direct contact with Soviet leaders, President Reagan now appears determined to hold some sort of meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, even if it produces no tangible results. His interest in meeting the Kremlin chief has been evolving over the last year, aides say, ever since he decided in January 1984 to pursue a new policy of less confrontation with the Soviet Union. Indeed, Mr. Reagan, under pressure in his first term to ease tensions with the Russians, once publicly suggested a meeting in New York with the ailing Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1982. But that was not taken seriously at the time. As recently as last month, Mr. Reagan turned down the opportunity to meet with Mr. Gorbachev at the time of Konstantin U. Chernenko's funeral, on the ground that nothing could be accomplished in such a brief visit. Some Administration officials say that Mr. Reagan wants, in his last years as President, to make his mark in history by achieving significant arms-control accords with the Russians and that, with a new leader in Moscow, there is a fresh opportunity to do so. Others add that having got his military rebuilding program off the ground, he feels he can negotiate with the Russians from a position of strength.