November 7, 1985

President Reagan said today that the Yurchenko affair, along with two other recent incidents involving Soviet citizens, might constitute a ''deliberate ploy'' to disrupt his coming meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Mr. Reagan said Vitaly Yurchenko, a K.G.B. officer who had been described by officials as a prized defector, had proven to be of little value. The assessment contradicted assertions by officials and by members of Congress who had been briefed about Mr. Yurchenko by the Central Intelligence Agency. ''The information that he provided was not anything new or sensational,'' Mr. Reagan told a group of news agency reporters. ''It was pretty much information already known to the C.I.A.'' President Voices Suspicion In voicing suspicion that recent incidents might have been staged, Mr. Reagan also mentioned the case of a Soviet soldier who sought refuge in the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and that of a seaman aboard the Soviet cargo ship Marshal Konev in the Mississippi River. Both made apparent moves to defect, then reversed themselves.

''If you had it within your power, complete power, to change one thing in the city over the next four years, what would you do and how would you do it?'' When asked that question yesterday, Mayor Koch proposed that the Legislature repeal the Wicks law - governing bidding on public projects - to ''allow us to build cheaper and better.'' The New York Times posed the same question to 12 other thoughtful New Yorkers. Here are their replies.

Eighteen European governments approved a plan today to increase Europe's technological presence through the development of 10 pilot technology projects. The plan was originally conceived as a civilian counterweight to the United States ''Star Wars'' research program. But there were no concrete proposals to finance the plan, known as Eureka, and most of the projects, ranging from high-powered industrial lasers to a diagnostic kit for gonorrhea, were under discussion well before the initiative was proposed by President Francois Mitterrand of France last April. The two-day gathering of foreign and research ministers came against the backdrop of discussions in several European countries over whether to support the Reagan Administration's $26 billion five-year research program into an antiballistic missile shield, the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

The General Accounting Office charged today that the awarding of Social Security's largest consulting contract was flawed by serious irregularities and potential conflicts of interest on the part of several officials, including John A. Svahn, who was Commissioner of Social Security at the time. Mr. Svahn, now President Reagan's assistant for policy development, was accused of giving his former employer a special advantage in competition for a multimillion-dollar contract to help modernize Social Security's computers. Mr. Svahn and representatives of the firm, Deloitte Haskins & Sells, denied doing anything wrong. Milton J. Socolar, special assistant to the Comptroller General of the United States, testified that Mr. Svahn had allowed Deloitte employees to use space in and near his office suite at the Social Security Administration headquarters in Baltimore. The employees, originally part of a Reagan Administration transition team, remained after the team broke up December 1980 as unpaid consultants on computer modernization.

Edgar M. Bronfman, the president of the World Jewish Congress, made a dramatic public appeal last night to John Cardinal O'Connor of New York, urging him to press the Vatican for diplomatic recognition of Israel. In remarks at a dinner honoring the Cardinal for his work in interfaith relations, Mr. Bronfman asked the Cardinal to ''please convey to Rome the importance to Jews everywhere of normalizing relations between the Vatican and Israel, which is home for so much of Jewish culture and so many of the world's Jews.'' The appeal has been made quietly by Jewish leaders many times before, but Mr. Bronfman's decision to confront the Cardinal publicly reflected his organization's discontent with the Roman Catholic Church's progress in healing centuries-old wounds in the Jewish community, particularly in its refusal to recognize Israel. No Reply by Cardinal The Cardinal did not reply to Mr. Bronfman's appeal at the dinner, but he later told reporters he had ''no hesitancy at all'' about discussing the issue with the Vatican Secretary of State, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, or with Pope John Paul II. ''But it would be presumptuous of me to think I could do more than that, to express the feelings of the Jewish community that I meet here in New York. And I have great trust in the understanding of the questions on the part of the Holy See.''