September 22, 1984

The United Automobile Workers and the General Motors Corporation reached agreement early today on a tentative three-year contract providing wage increases, added pension benefits and job security. In another major settlement that includes new provisions to protect the jobs of workers threatened by layoffs, the United Mine Workers and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association agreed today on a 40-month contract. (Page 10.) The General Motors settlement, at the end of a 16-hour bargaining session, came six days after the union began selective strikes that shut down over half of the manufacturer's car and truck production, idling about 110,000 workers. The pact covers 350,000 workers.

President Reagan, in an effort to break the deadlock in arms-control negotiations, will propose to Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko next week that the United States and the Soviet Union step up their contacts through more Cabinet- level meetings, Administration officials said today. The officials said it was hoped that the increased contacts would lead eventually to a meeting between Mr. Reagan and the Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko. The purpose of the proposal, which will be made when Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gromyko confer at the White House next Friday, will be to overcome the refusal of the Soviet Union to resume negotiations in Geneva on medium-range and strategic arms. Moscow has said it will not resume talks on those subjects until the North Atlantic Treaty Organization dismantles the new American missiles being deployed in Europe.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will investigate the embassy bombing. Walter F. Mondale accused the Administration of allowing security lapses. Page 4. WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The vulnerability of the United States Embassy in Lebanon to a car-bomb attack on Thursday was partly a result of a failure to coordinate security arrangements between the State and Defense Departments, Reagan Administration officials said today.

New York State's top judges have agreed to establish guidelines aimed at insuring that conservators and guardians are appointed by the courts ''on an impartial basis without favoritism and without even an appearance of impropriety,'' the state's Chief Judge said yesterday. The Chief Judge, Lawrence H. Cooke, said in an interview that ways to set up a ''reservoir of qualified persons'' would be considered by the Administrative Board of the courts next month. Judge Cooke said he favored a proposal to limit the number of large fees a conservator or guardian could collect in any one year. The Administrative Board also agreed Thursday to draft detailed guidelines for conservators and guardians. The board's administrative staff has been told to come up with suggested guidelines for the board to consider.

They started burning Sweet's Nursery today, eight acres of young orange and grapefruit trees that state and Federal officials say have been contaminated by a virulent disease that is threatening Florida's $2.5 billion citrus industry. Inmates of a nearby minimum security state prison, wearing white overalls, uprooted the trees, piled them in low mounds and set them ablaze with diesel fuel. State officials say the job will take nearly a week. Alan Sweet, 35 years old, and his wife, Tammy, 24, did not watch. They began building the nursery four years ago, at first working on their hands and knees to plant seedlings when they could not afford help. Now, with their stock valued at $250,000, their nursery was dissolving in gray smoke that drifted into the surrounding pine and cyprus woods outside this village in central Florida.