March 11, 1982

''In my judgment, our role for now and for the future is purely limited military assistance.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. David C. Jones, said today that he did not ''see any circumstances under which we would intervene with United States forces'' in El Salvador. Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, General Jones was repeatedly asked for his professional military opinion about the possibility that American troops would be sent to fight leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. He gave the same answer in slightly different words each time. Asked if the Pentagon had contingency plans for the dispatch of American forces to El Salvador, he said, ''We do not have plans to go into El Salvador with military forces.''

The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would enable Congress and individual states to adopt laws banning abortion. By a vote of 10 to 7, the panel endorsed a measure sponsored by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, that seeks to reverse the 1973 Supreme Court decision upholding the right of women to seek abortions. The vote today marked the first time that a full Congressional committee had supported an anti-abortion amendment and opened the way for a full-fledged floor debate on the issue. Two-Thirds Majority Needed Senator Hatch's proposed amendment would give Congress and the states ''concurrent power to restrict and prohibit abortion.'' State laws that were more restrictive than national laws would prevail. In seeking to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion, the amendment says, ''A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution.''

The gasoline tanker that blew up in the East River on Feb. 26 exploded before it reached the Williamsburg Bridge, according to testimony by eyewitnesses yesterday at a hearing into the causes of the blast. ''Everything happened north of the bridge,'' Louis Pantano, an employee at the Amstar Corporation's sugar refinery in Brooklyn, told a Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board hearing panel at Battery Park. His testimony and that of five other workers at the Amstar plant on the east bank of the river just north of the bridge contradicted earlier testimony by six crew members from the tanker and two nearby tugboats who also had witnessed the explosion.

In an unusual procedure, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is negotiating with groups of banks in its efforts to find a merger partner for the deeply troubled New York Bank for Savings, sources in Washington said yesterday. It was expected that by this weekend the Federal agency, which insures deposits in savings and commercial banks, will narrow its choices to two of the groups, and that the final decision will be made by the end of the month, the sources said. The New York Bank for Savings, which has its headquarters at 1230 Avenue of the Americas, has 19 branches, not including those of its divisions. The bank's assets total about $3.5 billion. Following a $34.7 million operating loss in the fourth quarter of 1981, its surplus - the amount by which its assets exceed its liabilities - dropped to $37.3 million, barely enough to get it through the present quarter if interest rates remain at or near present levels.