April 27, 1983

The nation's two largest steelmakers yesterday reported sizable first-quarter losses, reflecting the steel industry's continuing lag behind the nation's economic recovery. The United States Steel Corporation, the No.1 producer, lost $118 million in the first quarter, and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation reported a $175 million loss. The steelmaking segment at U.S. Steel, however, reported a $232 million operating loss, which the company said resulted from operating levels that were lower than last year. In the 1982 first quarter, U.S. Steel lost $24 million from steel operations.

The $225 million fraud by O.P.M. Leasing Services Inc. depended for its success on the ''ignorance, carelessness, poor judgment or selfinterest'' of many businessmen and professionals who dealt with the company, a bankruptcy trustee said in a report released yesterday. James P. Hassett, O.P.M.'s court-appointed trustee, said in the 600-page report that ''accountants, management consultants, lawyers, investment bankers, lessee representatives, bankers and other businessmen'' deserved ''substantial criticism'' for their dealings with O.P.M. His report said they all contributed, in some cases through dishonesty, to allowing ''one of the largest frauds in history'' to continue until years after it should have been exposed. Phony Computer Leases O.P.M., which grew to be one of the nation's largest computer leasing companies, obtained about $225 million from lending institutions during the decade before its collapse in early 1981 by using phony computer leases and other forged documents as collateral. In many cases, there were no computers. The company's two owners, Mordecai Weissman and Myron S. Goodman, and five employees have pleaded guilty to Federal crimes.

NEW YORK CITY supermarkets and specialty stores seem to be drowning in a sea of carbonated waters: naturally sparkling mineral water, naturally sparkling spring water, seltzer, sparkling seltzer, club soda, sparkling club soda, pure mineral water with effervescence, natural mineral water. The bewildering array of these products has engendered enormous confusion among consumers, most of whom are uncertain about the differences. Like many other products, especially those that have achieved a certain cachet, these bottled waters are often purchased for reasons that have nothing to do with their taste: How else to explain the popularity of a brand like Perrier, which even the former president of its American company could not differentiate from ordinary club soda in a blind tasting? And why would anyone spend $1.29 for a bottle indistinguishable from the contents of a 39-cent bottle of seltzer? Despite all the descriptive names given to these carbonated waters, there are only three categories: sparkling mineral water (carbonated water, often from an underground spring), seltzer (carbonated tap water) and club soda (carbonated tap water to which mineral salts are usually added). Everything else is simply a variation.

Sweden protested today against ''the gross violations of Swedish territorial integrity of which the Soviet Navy has been guilty'' and threatened to sink any submarine that enters its waters without permission. In an unusually strong series of actions for a neutral nation, the Swedish Government sent a stiff diplomatic note to Moscow, temporarily recalled its Ambassador there, Carl de Geer, and indicated that official visits between the two countries would be cut back sharply. Prime Minister Olof Palme said Soviet military activity off Sweden's coast should ''be roundly condemned by all.'' ''We are determined to be very firm but not hysterical,'' the Prime Minister said.

Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale charged yesterday that the Reagan Administration's arms policies were ''weakening America'' and proposed instead a series of specific steps, including a summit meeting with the Soviet Union, that he said would insure peace and national strength. In a frankly political speech to the nation's newspaper publishers, meeting in New York City, Mr. Mondale called the Administration's policies ''fundamentally flawed'' in their emphasis on building new, highly sophisticated weapons and in what he said was a rejection of real efforts to win accord on conventional and nuclear arms reductions. Freeze on Nuclear Tests Backed He backed a comprehensive and verifiable ban on developing nuclear weapons, including a freeze on nuclear weapons tests, and said the treaty to limit strategic arms negotiated by the Carter Administration in 1979 should be revised and resubmitted to the Senate. He endorsed a substantial buildup of conventional weapons as a way to reaffirm the policies of deterrence, but he opposed the development of a new experimental missile, the MX, and its deployment in existing silos.