October 12, 1982

The major candidates for United States Senator from New York argued over defense spending yesterday and accused each other of being unfair in discussing it. Politely but persistently, an animated Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan demanded numbers and definitions from his opponent, Assemblywoman, Florence M. Sullivan. Hurriedly looking through a heap of notes, she sometimes complied with his directions, sometimes counterattacked, sometimes complained. He challenged her at one point to produce a document to support her earlier contention that he had voted against $26 billion for defense. ''I haven't got it,'' she replied. ''You haven't got it because it doesn't exist,'' said Mr. Moynihan. ''And it was not a very fair statement,'' he added. Moments later, Mrs. Sullivan, shook her head. ''Talking about being unfair,'' she said. The Senator had implied in an earlier meeting that he shared ''inside information'' with President Reagan about Russian military might, she complained .

An oil shortage and price run-up is likely to undermine any Western economic recovery after 1985 unless countries do more to reduce dependence on imported oil, the International Energy Agency warned today. The agency, which coordinates Western energy policies, predicted that oil prices would decrease ''significantly'' this year and next, after adjustment for inflation. It based that prediction on the current oversupply of oil. Supply and demand should balance out in 1985, the agency said, but it expects a growing shortage to emerge during the second half of this decade, assuming that Western economies start growing again at an annual rate of between 2.7 and 3.2 percent. By 1990, unless additional conservation measures are taken, the world would face a shortage in available oil supplies of as much as 4 million barrels a day. That, it said, would lead to higher prices that would depress economic activity.

The Police Department of Waterbury, Conn., opened a criminal investigation yesterday into employee charges of illegal chemical dumping by a downtown toxic-waste treatment company. Lieut. Val Bochicchio of the detective division said the inquiry had been ordered by Mayor Edward D. Bergin. Earlier, the health director of Waterbury, Dr. Gert Wallach, described himself as ''shaken'' by the charges. He said in an interview that he would seek new tests, and that if the allegations were true, ''I was hoodwinked by the company.''

Monetarists, the economists who watch the Federal Reserve most closely, were widely divided today over the signficance of the changes disclosed last week by the nation's central bank. Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate and one of the founders of monetarism, maintained that the Fed is continuing a policy (opposed by Mr. Friedman) of tolerating wide swings in growth of the nation's basic money supply. ''I don't know what all the fuss is about,'' said Mr. Friedman in an interview. He said that he accepted the Fed's explanation that its decision last week to temporarily tolerate more rapid growth in the money supply did not represent a policy change.

There were no graduation exercises, no diplomas, no cheers from relatives, only a trip to the firing range, where 28 men and one woman sharpened their aim by firing bullets into targets with the short, snub-nosed revolvers that they will carry as undercover agents. It was the last session of a two-week intensive course for New York State's newest strike force, a group of experienced conservation officers being retrained to ferret out and gather evidence to convict illegal shippers and dumpers of hazardous wastes. Starting today, the plainclothes officers swung into action, operating out of field offices in White Plains, Buffalo and Albany. Their unit, known as the Bureau of Environmental Conservation Investigations, is modeled after the Bureau of Criminal Investigations of the state police but is an arm of the State Environmental Conservation Department.