February 2, 1983

Guerrilla forces have dealt a blow to the Government by capturing the southeastern Salvadoran city of Berlin, demonstrating that they can ''roam at will and raise havoc,'' according to a military source close to the situation. With their victory, won on Monday, guerrilla forces now control one-third of the rich agricultural province of Usulutan. The source said it was questionable whether the guerrillas could hold Berlin, the province's second largest city. But he said they appeared to be in a position to do considerable damage to the economy and even mount an attack on the provincial capital, also known as Usulutan, which is 20 miles southeast of Berlin.

House Democratic leaders unanimously committed themselves today to an emergency economic assistance program that would create public service jobs, provide shelter and soup kitchens for the destitute and avert foreclosures of homes and farms. In pressing this legislation, the Democrats plan to dramatize the plight of the worst victims of the economy and depict on the House floor the struggles of the homeless, hungry and dispossessed. By moving along such a broad front, the Democrats hope to seize the initiative from President Reagan and provide a contrast with his insistence on additional cutbacks in social programs. ''With 14 million people out of work, the highest number in history, it is time for a combined program of relief, recovery and reconstruction,'' Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. said after a two-anda-half-hour meeting with all 25 House committee chairmen.

The Agriculture Department announced today that it was scrapping a five-year-old program to create wilderness areas in national forests. Instead, the department said it would re-evaluate areas already recommended for protection in the wilderness system. The decision again throws wide open the issue of how much of the forest system will be protected as wilderness and how much will be open to timber interests and other developers. Assistant Agriculture Secretary John B. Crowell Jr. said the reevaluation would be done on a forest-by-forest basis and could take up to two years at a cost of up to $30 million. In the meantime, he said, timbering and other development will be permitted in forest areas without roads that were not previously recommended as wilderness areas.

Yuri V. Andropov, the Soviet leader, today dismissed President Reagan's proposal that they jointly ban their medium-range nuclear weapons as ''the same 'zero option' '' that Moscow has already found ''patently unacceptable.'' Mr. Andropov accused Mr. Reagan of treating the question of a summit meeting lightly by making it conditional on Andropov remarks, page A8. the American negotiating proposal. ''This can only be regretted,'' he said. The Soviet leader issued his response to Mr. Reagan's letter in the form of an interview with the newspaper Pravda.

Stanley Fink, the Assembly Speaker, said today that the Legislature might consider raising the state's major taxes to avoid the proposed laying off of more than 8,000 state workers. Increases in the taxes - on personal income, sales and corporate profits -were emphatically rejected by Governor Cuomo in proposing a $31.5 billion state budget. He called the increases counterproductive and said he had made a campaign ''commitment'' not to raise the taxes.