April 13, 1985

Five Central American countries agreed tonight to establish a commission to monitor an accord being negotiated on reducing arms in the region, an international group sponsoring the talks announced. In a communique after two days of meetings, the group described the agreement on a commission as a ''notable advance in the negotiation'' of a regional treaty by the five countries - Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The arms reduction accord would be a major part of that treaty. The agreement tonight gave new life to the two-year-old effort to find a peaceful solution to the turmoil in Central America. The effort, which had been stalled for six months, is being led by the Contadora group - Mexico, Venezuela, Panama and Colombia.

Amid public outcry and legal debate, Gary Dotson went back to state prison this morning to continue serving time for a rape that his accuser now says never happened. The judge who tried the case six years ago, Richard L. Samuels, decided Thursday to reject the recantation by Cathleen Crowell Webb, citing legal precedents and saying he believed her account of the rape and did not believe her now. Mr. Dotson, who was briefly freed on bond after Mrs. Webb came forward, was put in the hospital of the prison in Joliet, Ill., according to Nick Howell, a state corrections spokesman. Mr. Howell said Mr. Dotson was ''distraught'' and would stay in the hospital for the weekend because ''this way, he has easy access to psychiatrists.'' Appeals Are Planned Mrs. Webb said today that she would be willing to stand trial for perjury if that would mean Mr. Dotson's release. ''If a jury could hear the testimony, read the transcript, hear my true story now,'' she said, ''I feel confident they would believe the truth.''

A state judge yesterday dismissed a manslaughter indictment against a police officer who killed a woman with two shotgun blasts after being called to her apartment in the Bronx in an eviction dispute. The judge, Acting Justice Vincent A. Vitale of State Supreme Court, ruled that the evidence was ''legally insufficent'' to indict the officer, Stephen Sullivan, for manslaughter or any other offense in the death of the woman, Eleanor Bumpurs. After reviewing testimony before a grand jury that voted an indictment in January for second-degree manslaughter, Justice Vitale said Officer Sullivan followed the existing Police Department guidelines when he fired twice at the 66-year-old Mrs. Bumpurs last October. Attack With a Kitchen Knife Officer Sullivan, 43, testified before the grand jury in the Bronx that he had to fire two rounds from a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun at Mrs. Bumpurs to protect a fellow officer she was attacking with a kitchen knife. In an interview yesterday after the ruling, the officer said, ''I'm very happy, ecstatic.''

A crew of seven, including a United States Senator wired to a medical experiment, rocketed into orbit today aboard the space shuttle Discovery to deliver two satellites and conduct a variety of scientific tests. The astronauts released a Canadian communications satellite early this evening and plan to deploy a Navy satellite Saturday. The Canadian satellite, Anik C-1, was sent on its course toward a higher equatorial orbit. Commander's Second Mission The mission is commanded by Col. Karol J. Bobko of the Air Force, who is making his second shuttle journey. The most celebrated occupant of the winged spaceship is Senator Jake Garn, Republican of Utah, who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee that oversees the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's budget.

Fifty-one years after he arrived in Russia, the man known to his friends as ''America'' left today to return to what he likes to call the old country, New York City. ''One, two, three, four, five,'' Bernard Lamport counted off the members of his Soviet family this morning as they passed with him into the final customs check at Moscow's main international airport. Somewhere in the 43 pieces of luggage he had sent ahead was a 1934 snapshot of himself at the age of 4, with his parents aboard the liner Bremen as they headed for a new life in the Soviet Union, where they hoped to escape the Depression and help build a new Soviet society. His father worked as a journalist and translator, and their lives were comfortable, Mr. Lamport said, perhaps more comfortable than they would have been in America. But until they died some years ago, his parents maintained a hope of returning home.