December 11, 1981

President Reagan appealed to Americans today to leave Libya immediately and invalidated American passports for travel to that country. But he stopped short of embargoing Libyan oil, seeking additional sanctions against the Libyan Government or telling the estimated 1,500 Americans in Libya that they must return home. A senior Administration official said Mr. Reagan was still considering a series of ''political, diplomatic, eco- Text of U.S. statement, page A12. nomic and other measures'' aimed at ending the ''current lawless behavior'' of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader. He said that it was ''obvious to all'' that an embargo on oil imports had been ''discussed,'' but that no new steps were imminent.

A long-awaited draft of a House telecommunications bill was made public today and, as expected, it was tougher on the American Telephone and Telegraph Company than a counterpart bill already passed by the Senate. The 120-page draft developed by Timothy E. Wirth, chairman of the of the House subcommittee on telecommunications, includes these differences from the bill already passed by the Senate in these important respects: - A.T.& T. would be required to purchase 30 percent of its equipment from outside suppliers for an indefinite period. The Senate bill also has a 30 percent requirement, but for a limited period of time. A.T.& T. now is required to purchase 15 percent of its equipment from outside suppliers. It opposed the higher percentage in the Senate bill.

In a unanimous vote last night, the Board of Estimate made its preliminary selection of six companies for cable television franchise awards in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The board's decision, which came after nearly eight hours of polite but often pointed testimony, authorizes the city to begin contract negotiations with the six companies. The choices will not be final until the contracts are awarded next spring, but, barring any dropouts or unexpected turns in the contract talks, the actual franchises are likely to go to five of the six companies that were chosen yesterday. In their vote, members of the eight-member board approved, with some modifications, the recent recommendations of its own cable committee - the Cable Television Working Group - on which of the 13 competing cable companies should be considered for franchises in the four boroughs. Board officials reiterated that the agreements would be used as models to update service in Manhattan, which has had cable television for a decade. The six ''targeted'' companies, all among the nation's larget cable companies or affiliated with one of the largest, are the following: - Queens: Warner Amex Cable Communications Inc., Queens Inner Unity Cable Systems and American Cablevision of Queens, a subsidiary of the American Television and Communications Corporation.

A gallant troupe of jugglers, acrobats, clowns and musicians, along with a 4,000-pound baby elephant, offered their talents like holiday gifts last night to children from 11 social agencies and in foster care, many in wheelchairs. In the best the-show-must-go-on tradition, 30 members of the Big Apple Circus cast performed under their blue and orange big top at Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park, entertaining 1,000 guests and members of the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York. Except for a few tears backstage, there was little to betray the shock of an early-morning fire that had swept the nearby animal tent and a trailer, killing a dancing horse named Dabo and a pony named Kelso. Three children - one of them Wlasticek Bertini, an 8-year-old unicyclist who later ''went on'' in his family's act - were sleeping in other trailers along with nine adult performers and crew members. They were not injured.

The Mobil Corporation has built a reputation as the bulldog of the oil industry, plunging headlong into fights that other companies would prefer to avoid. The latest evidence supporting this reputation is its stated intent to buy as much as a quarter of the stock of the United States Steel Corporation, now that the steelmaker seems on the verge of taking over the Marathon Oil Company. Politicians and consumer groups see Mobil's aggressiveness as yet another example of Big Oil's arrogance. Some economists question the efficiency of deploying such enormous amounts of capital for such a takeover. Even other oil companies confess to some embarrassment over the Marathon affair. But the flak does not appear to disturb Mobil.