October 3, 1985

Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato said today that he had worked out a plan for New York to begin receiving Federal money from the Westway trade-in immediately, a year earlier than had been expected. The Federal highway funds would be the first installment of the $1.725 billion that the state is to receive from trading in the Westway highway and development project, which was abandoned last month by New York. Under Mr. D'Amato's plan, New York would receive about $150 million over the next year for highway projects, rather than waiting until next October for the first funds. ''It's a bonanza,'' said Mr. D'Amato, when asked about his plan. ''It starts the flow of dollars one year early.''

The White House backed away today from its firm support of the Israeli air strike on Tuesday at the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunisia. A carefully phrased White House statement called the raid ''understandable as an expression of self-defense'' but said the bombing ''cannot be condoned.'' In its initial statements Tuesday, the White House had called the Israeli action ''a legitimate response'' to ''terrorist attacks.'' The P.L.O. said 67 people were killed in the bombing. Israel said it attacked the P.L.O. headquarters in retaliation for the slaying of three Israeli civilians in Larnaca, Cyprus, last week. P.L.O. officials in Cyprus denied at the time that they or any group affiliated with the P.L.O. were responsible, although an anonymous caller took responsibility on behalf of a Palestinian commando unit.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has been criticized by some in Congress for lax enforcement of futures industry regulations, announced a series of fines and other actions today against nearly a dozen commodities firms, including what agency officials called the largest civil penalty ever levied against a single respondent to one of its complaints. In announcing the actions at a news conference here today, Dennis Klejna, the director of the C.F.T.C.'s enforcement division in Washington, said that the futures industry was ''not rank with abuse, but we want to convey the message to transgressors that we'll take them to task.'' Mr. Klejna said that the agency had undertaken 85 enforcement actions in the recently concluded fiscal year, compared with 73 the previous year. Some futures industry analysts speculated that the commission's multi-count enforcement actions might be aimed at winning support for the commission, which comes up for Congressional reauthorization next year.

The bogged-down computer system in New Jersey's Division of Motor Vehicles was programmed with a relatively new computer language even though its manufacturer and state officials said they urged that a more universally accepted and proven language be used. The dispute over the selection of programming language has emerged as a key element in the initial failure of the division's $15 million computer modernization project to improve services for the state's 4 million motorists, to store data centrally and to cut $3 million a year from operating costs. Instead, the state said, it is now spending $160,000 a month in overtime to clean up a backlog of 1.4 million vehicle registration and ownership records that have piled up in the division's headquarters here since the start of the project in July. This work is expected to last until early next year.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said last night that South Africa's apartheid system ''is doomed'' and that efforts must be made to reach political compromise before a violent revolution topples the Government. Otherwise, he warned, ''the black majority might likely wind up exchanging one set of oppressors for another and, yes, could be worse off.'' In a speech to the National Committee on American Foreign Policy at the New York Hilton, Mr. Shultz said that the present system of racial separation ''must go'' and that ''the only alternative to a radical, violent outcome is a political accommodation now, before it is too late.'' Impassioned Appeal on Mideast Mr. Shultz, in addressing the black-tie audience of 600, broke into his prepared text with an impassioned appeal for an end to violence in the Middle East. He seemed to express understanding for Israel's attack Tuesday on the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia, saying the air strike occurred ''in the face of rising terrorist attacks on the citizens of Israel.''