June 6, 1981

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 13 to 4 today to recommend that the Senate reject the nomination of Ernest W. Lefever as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. Five hours later, Mr. Lefever withdrew from consideration for the post. Mr. Lefever asked that his name be withdrawn in a letter to President Reagan that was made public late this afternoon by Senator S.I. Hayakawa, Republican of California. In the letter, Mr. Lefever said he was ''blameless of the charges and innuendoes against my integrity and my compassion.''

Officials of the New York City Transit Authority are unable to say what 300 bus drivers have been doing since last December when Grumman buses were taken out of service for repairs. The Transit Authority is obligated to pay the drivers under its contract with the Transport Workers Union and cannot unilaterally assign them to other work. ''They're getting paid for a contract,'' said John D. Simpson, president of the Transit Authority, in a telephone interview. ''The circumstances of the shortages are beyond their control.''

Washington, June 5 - The United States and the Soviet Union have agreed to begin talks in Washington in the next few weeks to prepare for nogotiations later in the year on limiting each side's mediumrange nuclear missiles in Europe, Administration officials said today. According to the officials, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin worked out an arrangement last month for senior aides to meet regularly, starting this month and continuing through the summer, in advance of a meeting in late September between Mr. Haig and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko. Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, will conduct the discussions with Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh, the No. 2 diplomat at the Soviet Embassy. Mr. Eagleburger will be assisted by Richard R. Burt, Director of Politico-Military affairs in the State Department, officials said. The disclosure that the Russians have agreed to the arrangement is the first indication that Moscow has apparently accepted the Reagan Administration's timetable for talks, officials said.

Members of the United Mine Workers of America are to vote today on whether to end their 10-week national strike. But whether they accept a new contract, as expected, or reject it, their union remains in desperate straits. The nation's coal industry is looking hopefully ahead to a boom, but the miners' union, once the most feared and uncompromising in the American labor movement, is itself fearful that it will not share in that boom. The miners, going against the wishes of their president, Sam M. Church Jr., and their executive board, engaged two and a half months ago in what developed as a little-understood and bitter strike that has reduced coal production by just 50 percent. Not the Usual Coal Strike This has not been just another coal strike, of which there have been at least a score in this century. Rather, it has been an extraordinary strike, for it concerns not merely money but, in the minds of many miners, saving the union.

In what Labor Department officials described as the first significant increase in a year, the nation's unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent in May from 7.3 percent the month before. Last month's increase indicated sluggishness in the economy after a period of moderate growth, according to Government and private economists. However, the economists also said that they expected no significant economic decline this year. The sharpest increase in unemployment took place among adult men, particularly those in construction and in some manufacturing jobs, according to the statistics prepared by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.