May 24, 1986

The United States today ordered the expulsion of South Africa's senior military attache in this country in response to South African raids on Monday against targets in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. The action was the first tangible step taken by the Reagan Administration beyond verbal denunciation of the attacks. But the Administration reaffirmed today that although other steps might be taken, it had no intention at this time of recalling the United States Ambassador from South Africa or imposing more stringent economic sanctions. The United States also used its veto, together with Britain, tonight to block a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have condemned the South African raids and imposed economic sanctions against Pretoria. [ Page 4. ] Shultz Described as Angry Administration officials said, however, that the United States would use political tools to try to press the South Africans to stop such cross-border operations and to discuss with black leaders how to do away with apartheid and open up the country's political system to participation by the black majority.

Major crime is on the rise again in New York City after nearly four years of general decline, Police Department figures show. Law-enforcement officials and criminologists who had predicted continuing decreases say they are puzzled by the trend and are unsure how to cope with it. The officials say the rise represents the longest sustained period of increase since the number of reported crimes peaked in 1981. Major crimes rose from the previous year's level in seven of the eight months ending last January, the most recent month for which the Police Department has released statistics. The department is expected to announce next week that reports of crime also rose in February.

Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d believes that United States officials' denunciations of drug trafficking in Mexico and their public accusations of official corruption there do not reflect the Reagan Administration's view, a Justice Department spokesman said today. Mr. Meese's contention appeared to signal a split within the Administration over United States-Mexican relations. Officials of the State Department and the Customs Service, in testimony before a Senate subcommittee last week, offered what they described as the sharpest public criticism of Mexico from the United States Government in many years.

An especially powerful car bomb exploded in Christian East Beirut today, killing 11 people, wounding 84 and setting several buildings afire, the police said. As has been the case in almost all such terrorist attacks in this country in recent years, no group took responsibility. Car bombs have been a scourge of the Lebanese civil war and have killed more civilians than random bombardment of residential areas. The bombing raised to 64 the number of Lebanese who have died and to 243 the number of those wounded in the last three days of bloodshed.

A stage production of George Orwell's ''Animal Farm'' scheduled as part of Theater of Nations, an international festival to be held in Baltimore next month, has been canceled because Soviet officials protested its inclusion in the festival. The decision to exclude ''Animal Farm'' was made by Wole Soyinka, the prominent Nigerian playwright who has been imprisoned and tortured for his criticism of his own Government's policies. Mr. Soyinka is president of the group sponsoring the festival, the International Theater Institute, a nongovernmental organization originally founded by UNESCO. ''Animal Farm'' - a National Theater of Great Britain production directed by Sir Peter Hall, who is director of the National - was specifically chosen by the Theater of Nations for the festival. But after meeting with Soviet representatives, who objected to the festival's inclusion of the play, Mr. Soyinka told the National Theater that some of the 62 nations represented in the International Theater Institute might be embarrassed by the production, a stage adaptation of the famous 1945 novel satirizing a totalitarian state.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said today that he would lead a fight to revoke funds for new chemical weapons, arguing that the Administration had failed to comply with a Congressional mandate requiring prior approval of NATO's governing political body. The chairman, Representative Dante B. Fascell, Democrat of Florida, joined other members of Congress in charging that the Administration had flouted the mandate by seeking only the backing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's defense ministers. Deal With Germans Is Assailed He also said that in order to secure the approval of West Germany, the Administration had struck a secret deal by which it will remove from Europe the existing stockpile of chemical weapons and will not send the new ones to replace it unless there is a crisis and Bonn agrees. ''That is a farce from a legal standpoint and folly from a foreign policy and national security standpoint,'' Mr. Fascell said in a statement. ''We should not build new chemical weapons under these conditions.''

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who has spoken of his friendship with the United States, today unleashed a barrage of criticism at President Reagan, accusing him of engaging in ''pure protectionism'' against Canada. Mr. Mulroney's Government sent a rare protest to Washington and threatened to retaliate against American imports because of the stiff tariffs that Mr. Reagan approved Thursday on certain Canadian lumber products. ''We are looking at options of retaliation,'' the Secretary of State for External Affairs, Joe Clark, said. ''We don't want to get into that, but this action leaves us no alternative.''

For the most part, tobacco grows here. But down a yellow gravel road, under the low-limbed mahobohoba and msasa trees, smooth stones that have been fashioned into solemn owls and moon-shaped faces, lumbering tortoises and anguished women sprout from the sandy soil. Like the crops in nearby fields, rows of stone sculpture propped on crude log posts and on small stacks of rough bricks wait silently, a harvest for the eyes. On the hillside above the trees, a faint ''chink-chink, chink-chink'' tickles the clear, still air. Tucked in a horseshoe-shaped area of the Great Dike, the southern tip of the massive spine of volcanic rock that cuts through the eastern half of this continent, the Tengenenge sculptors are taking part in a major resurgence of Shona sculpture, an artistic movement that was born here, and in two other parts of this country, in the 1960's.

What most surprised Humberto Rubin about the mob attack on his radio station last month was not the crash of breaking glass or the crack of shots being fired into the air. Rather, it was the sound of musical accompaniment. The Government denied any responsibility for the assault near sign-off time on April 29, just as it did for the raid five days later on Radio Nanduti's transmission station 12 miles outside Asuncion, where masked gunmen stole vital pieces of electronic equipment. Yet a tape recording made by a cool-headed technician of the first cacophonous attack brought an interesting revelation. The band that accompanied the 100 or so attackers could distinctly be heard playing two polkas, ''General Stroessner'' and ''The Colorado,'' familiar tributes to Paraguay's longtime dictator and his party.

The Government announced this week that it was taking steps that would nearly double the price of tortillas, and labor leaders denounced the step today as a blow to a scheduled 25 percent rise in the minimum wage. The Government said the price increase was part of its effort to trim subsidies in the bloated Federal budget.

Hundreds of policemen and army troops surrounded a house in a Quito suburb today where leftist guerrillas were believed to be holding a kidnapped Government official and demanding the resignation of President Leon Febres Cordero. The police said the Government was negotiating with the rebels, who said they were members of the ''Free Fatherland Guerrillas'' group. The official, Enrique Echeverria, a lawyer who is on the Court of Constitutional Guarantees, was kidnapped Tuesday as he drove from Quito to his suburban home.

President Corazon C. Aquino traveled today to this center of Communist insurgency, where she met with a group of rebel returnees and later outlined a hard-line policy on a proposed cease-fire. Although praising the ''obvious bravery and acute sense of justice'' of the mostly young returnees with whom she met, the President insisted in a speech, on tough conditions for a truce that would protect the honor of the military. The President's speech appeared intended to demonstrate that she was sensitive to the needs of the insurgents while reassuring the armed forces of her intention to act as Commander in Chief to maintain national security. A Tumultuous Reception She received a tumultuous reception in the streets of Davao, recalling the clamor of her election campaign. Mrs. Aquino's advisers said her reception was also intended to reinforce the message to both sides that she still commands the enthusiastic allegiance of the people.