January 22, 1983

President Reagan certified to Congress today that despite ''great obstacles'' El Salvador was not only making progress on human rights but was also laying the foundation for democratic government. Such a certification on progress in human, political and economic rights in El Salvador is required every six months as a condition for continuing military aid to that country. At stake is $25 million in military aid Congress has approved for this fiscal year, but the Administration may seek an increase later this year, officials said. The 67-page report sent to Congress this afternoon ''describes the beginning of a process of building democratic structures and principles,'' the report said.

The Consumer Price Index, pulled down by lower interest rates on home mortgages, dropped by three-tenths of 1 percent in December, the Labor Department reported today. The decline brought the inflation rate for all of last year to 3.9 percent, a full percentage point less than most economists had predicted. It was the lowest increase since the 3.4 percent of 1972, when wage and price controls were in effect, and far below the double-digit rates of 1979 and 1980. The index rose 8.9 percent in 1981.

The Justice Department charged today that the Chicago suburb of Cicero excluded blacks from living there or working in town government jobs. In a suit filed in Federal District Court in Chicago, the department said: ''Through its officials, the Town of Cicero has verbally and physically harassed blacks attempting to migrate to Cicero, including overt actions to physically remove such blacks from the town.'' Justice Department officials declined to elaborate except to say that on occasions officials had physically ejected blacks from the town. The suit also charged that the town had been eligible for substantial Federal funds through a Community Development Block Grant Program designed to provide desegregated housing but had refused to participate in the program in order to deny housing to blacks.

Paul H. Nitze, the chief American negotiator at the talks on medium-range missiles in Europe, hinted strongly today after a meeting with President Reagan that the United States would show flexibility if the Soviet Union demonstrated some new ''give'' in its proposals. Although both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Nitze defended the so-called zero option proposed by the United States in November 1981 as the best way to handle the European missile question, Mr. Nitze, in response to reporters' questions, seemed to suggest that Washington might drop the zero option in response to some undefined concessions by Moscow. In his zero option proposal, Mr. Reagan offered to forgo deployment of 572 new American missiles in Europe in return for Moscow's dismantling of all 600 of its existing medium-range missiles. The Soviet Union has offered to cut the size of its missile force aimed at Western Europe to 162, the same number of missiles deployed by the French and British, if the United States does not deploy the cruise and Pershing 2 missiles.

The Salvation Army soup truck was about 10 minutes late the other night and the little crowd, a quorum of misery, waited, silent as the river below: hardly a word, barely a complaint, down and out on the Quai d'Austerlitz, between the railway station and the Seine, waiting for a little delivery truck and a plastic bowl of vegetable soup. There were 16 men at the curb when the truck pulled in. There were a couple of winos, overcoats shellacked in filth, and there were a couple of drug addicts, with defused eyes and faces blank as robots. There was a student type who seemed to be taking an investigative semester in the lower depths, and then there were eight or nine men in their 20's and 30's, who said they had been hunting for work and found none, who were hungry and who stood around very quietly looking for the soup truck that comes about 8:30 P.M. The truck, a throwback to the 1930's, when the Salvation Army dragged a soup wagon through the streets of Paris for its destitute, was put back into service in December for the first time in five decades. Soon afterward, a dormitory for homeless men was opened next to a bus parking lot at the edge of the city, and two more will follow it soon.