March 3, 1984

Mayor Koch told the Salvation Army yesterday that its contracts with the city to provide day care and other services would not be renewed until it adopted an unbiased hiring policy toward homosexuals. Mr. Koch, in a letter to the organization, said that he regretted the situation but that he would allow no exceptions to his Executive Order 50, which bans discrimination because of ''sexual orientation or affectional preference.'' Any group doing business with the city must promise in writing to comply with the two-year-old order. 'There Can Be No Exception' ''The city has high regard for the work of the Salvation Army, but there can be no exception to Executive Order 50,'' the Mayor wrote to Lieut. Col. Wallace C. Conrath, divisional commander of the Salvation Army of Greater New York. He said that while religious groups were free to practice any way they wished, they must comply with all city laws when they receive government money to provide services.

A former Salvadoran military official has implicated high-ranking Salvadoran officials and civilians in acts of terrorism, including Roberto d'Aubuisson, a leading candidate for El Salvador's presidency. The former official, who has served at the highest level of the security police in El Salvador, has given members of Congress extensive information on what he says are the inner workings of Salvadoran death squads, how and why they were formed, who directs and pays them and who selects their victims. He is believed to be the first officer with experience in the highest councils of the Salvadoran Government to accuse fellow officers publicly of violent political crimes. It was not possible to obtain independent verification of the accusations by the officer, who asked to remain anonymous because of fear of reprisal. But a United States Senator who interviewed him says he will seek an investigation of the charges and a Congressman says he is confident of the former official's veracity.

When Robert Newmann began sandblasting a wall of the Palladium Theater in Manhattan in 1982, he intended to create an experimental work of art. Two years later, however, the project has become an experiment of a different sort: the first test of a new law protecting artists and the works they create. For the past year, Mr. Newmann maintains, the Palladium's new tenant has blocked him from completing his project, a mural designed to coax a variety of tones out of a brick wall. So, citing the Artists' Authorship Rights Act, signed by Governor Cuomo last year and in effect since Jan. 1, he has taken the tenant and the landlord to court.

Syria's key Lebanese allies tonight dropped their demands for the resignation of President Amin Gemayel. Officials here said the move cleared the way for carrying out an accord between Mr. Gemayel and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria to end Lebanon's strife. The demands that the Lebanese President resign - which had come from Walid Jumblat, the Druse leader, and Nabih Berri, the Shiite Moslem leader - had been seen as a major obstacle to agreement on the framework of a Lebanese peace accord. In Beirut today, officials said Mr. Assad and Mr. Gemayel had reached an understanding on how to achieve a political solution to the conflict. On Thursday, Syria's official press agency said that after two days of talks, Mr. Gemayel and Mr. Assad were in ''complete agreement on the ways and means of reinforcing Lebanon's Arab identity, unity and independence.''

Konstantin U. Chernenko urged the United States today to take actions that could signal ''the start of a real drastic change in Soviet-American relations.'' ''We would wish such a drastic change,'' the new Soviet leader said in his first major address since the funeral of his predecessor, Yuri V. Andropov. ''Now it is up to Washington to act.'' Mr. Chernenko's speech was the last of a series of ''pre-election speeches'' by unopposed candidates to the Supreme Soviet, one of the major rituals of the Soviet one-party system.