March 19, 1982

President Reagan voiced disappointment over lagging support among business executives for his economic recovery plan. He asked a meeting of the N.A.M. to back his budget for next year. (Page A1.) The public disagrees with Mr. Reagan's unyielding budget priorities on taxes and arms spending, the New York Times/CBS News Poll shows. (A1.) The President's Economic Policy Advisory Board decided that the budget deficits he has proposed must be reduced. In a nearly six-hour meeting, most of the advisers favored cutting spending, but some - including Arthur F. Burns, Herbert Stein and Charls E. Walker - suggested deferring a tax cut. (D15.)

West Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands cut key interest rates today in a coordinated move to stimulate investment and adjust to a decline in inflation. Bankers said the cuts demonstrated that European governments were determined to lower rates, despite the recent rebound in American rates. European governments have charged in recent months that high rates in the United States have forced them to keep their own rates high to protect the value of their currencies. They have also said that the high cost of money has caused unemployment in Europe to climb rapidly because investment has been stifled.

President Reagan expressed disappointment today over flagging support among businessmen for his economic program and called on the business community to support his budget for the 1983 fiscal year. ''What we need now is not last-minute haggling or displays of blatant self-interest,'' Mr. Reagan told a meeting of Excerpts from address, page D15. the National Association of Manufacturers. ''We need the support that only America's businessmen can give us.''

Four members of a Dutch television crew were killed Wednesday in a rural part of El Salvador where they had gone to film a guerrilla group. The Salvadoran Army said tonight that the newsmen had died when guerrillas accompanying them opened fire on an army patrol. Reporters who went to the scene in Chalatenango Province north of the capital found bloody clothing and 30 spent M-16 shells near the spot where associates of the four men said they had been dropped off at 5 P.M. Wednesday. Residents of nearby villages reported they had heard 20 minutes of firing shortly after 5 P.M. Bodies Reported Mutilated Confirmation of the death of the four newsmen first came from Koen Steendick, the Dutch Consul in El Salvador, and from Hendrick van den Broek, a spokesman for the Dutch Embassy in Mexico City. Mr. Steendick said he had been told by Foreign Ministry officials that the four bodies had been mutilated.

After the United States Postal Service began its electronic mail service on Jan. 4, one happy customer wrote that ''neither system downtime, line noise nor software bugs'' had stayed the new service from its appointed rounds. But while the system, introduced with great fanfare, seems to have worked technically, it has so far been a flop commercially and the Postal Service will likely fall far short of its initial targets for message traffic. In its first 10 weeks of operation, the electronic mail service carried 66,500 letters, an average of 6,650 a week. While volume spurted to nearly 15,000 messages for the first week of this month, bringing the postal authorities to predict an upturn, it plunged to about 5,000 messages last week. The Postal Service had projected a first-year volume of at least 20 million letters, or 385,000 a week, and are clearly dismayed by the slow acceptance. ''It's low, what can I tell you?'' said Karen T. Uemoto, director of the electronic mail operations.