July 23, 1986

Nineteen months after a gas leak killed 2,000 people around its plant in Bhopal, India, the Union Carbide Corporation said yesterday that it would attempt to sell its agricultural products division, which makes the same chemicals responsible for the Bhopal disaster. Carbide, a manufacturer of chemicals, plastics and other industrial products, said it did not plan to sell the Bhopal plant itself, which has been shut since the accident in December 1984 and held under tight security by the Indian Government. Carbide's agricultural products business principally makes insecticides, which are sold worldwide under the brand names of Temik and Sevin. The division also makes herbicides. $1 Billion Lawsuits If a buyer is found for the division, Carbide would still face huge claims for damages filed by the Bhopal victims. Lawsuits in Indian courts seek more than $1 billion in damages.

President Reagan urged the South African Government today to move toward ''political peace.'' But he reaffirmed his opposition to stringent economic sanctions, saying that to impose them would be a ''historic act of folly.'' For the first time, Mr. Reagan asked the Government of President P. W. Botha to establish a ''timetable'' for the elimination of apartheid and to release all political prisoners. He did not set a deadline for these actions.

The economy grew at an annual rate of only 1.1 percent in the second quarter, the weakest performance since late 1982, when the current expansion began, the Commerce Department said today. The result was perhaps the strongest evidence so far of the widespread and persistent economic malaise that has cut growth to what many regard as worrisomely low levels. Even with a hefty upward revision of the figures for the first quarter, to a 3.8 percent rate from 2.9 percent, first-half growth at a rate of 2.4 percent was far short of the Administration's 4 percent target for the year as a whole and was significantly under the pace widely regarded as needed to prevent unemployment from rising. Strong Points Stressed Various Administration spokesmen pointed to the bright spots in today's report, particularly strong consumer spending, but Democrats leaped on it to denounce President Reagan's economic policies.

The Peking bureau chief of The New York Times was expelled from China today after being detained for nearly six days on suspicion of espionage. The correspondent, John F. Burns, was ousted from the country for ''activities incompatible with his status as a journalist.'' The official New China News Agency said he had been involved in ''deliberately breaking into Chinese areas closed to aliens, thereby violating the law governing aliens' entry into and exit from the People's Republic of China.'' In a statement issued in New York last night, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher of The Times, said, ''We are grateful for the prompt resolution of the problem facing John Burns, though we regret his expulsion from China after so many years of distinguished reporting for The New York Times.''

''Too often in the past, we Americans - acting out of anger and frustration and impatience - have turned our backs on flawed regimes, only to see disaster follow.''