December 15, 1990

New York City's police expansion plan, created after last summer's heavily reported rash of criminal violence, would send proportionately fewer officers to some of the city's highest-crime precincts than to some of the safest, a computer study shows. An analysis of the plan by The New York Times found a number of disparities between levels of violent crime and the percentage of additional officers that would be assigned to precincts and borough commands.

When William J. Bennett backed out of his agreement to become chairman of the Republican National Committee he was walking away from one of the biggest headaches in American politics right now. The Republican Party is rife with problems that have long been associated with the Democrats: ideological schisms, personal bickering, pique parading as principle and individual agendas undermining party unity. There is rising concern among Republicans around the country that at a time when the White House should be pulling the party together, the President is distracted by a range of foreign crises and his chief of staff, John H. Sununu, is more concerned with settling grudges with other powerful Republicans. The absence of Lee Atwater, the party chief who is suffering from an inoperable brain tumor, has become glaringly apparent, many Republicans now say. Mr. Sununu has tried to consolidate the jobs of chief of staff and chief political adviser. This would be difficult for even the most light-footed of operatives. But politically minded Republicans say it has created nothing but grief under Mr. Sununu, who walks across political minefields with all the grace of a raging elephant. Friends insist Mr. Bennett was telling the truth when he announced he could not succed Mr. Atwater because his concerns about conflict of interest would keep him from making as much money as he needed. But they also said that he had long discussions with associates about the seriousness of the party's internal divisions, and that this did nothing to encourage him to overcome the financial obstacles. Indeed, officials in Mr. Sununu's office say they offered to more than double the chairman's salary, to $300,000, to entice Mr. Bennett. But that was said to be less than half of what he could make from speaking fees. So he walked away sending a letter of explanation to the President and holding a news conference in the White House driveway that only added to the sense that the Republican camp is in disarray. "I would not characterize it as chaos," said Eddie Mahe, who helped run the Republican National Committee when Mr. Bush was its chairman. "But it surely could be characterized as confusion. There is no shining beacon on any hill that all forces are moving toward. It's just a mumbo jumbo of forces on a plain." Some of the current problem goes to the very core of the party. Two of the bonding agents of the Republican coalition, opposition to communism and opposition to taxes, have been weakened, one as a result of world events and the other as a result of White House handling of the budget negotiations. On top of these philosophical problems, and in several cases because of them, Washington is being treated to a series of Republican feuds of a sort remarkable even by Washington's standards of pigue, backbiting and infighting. Some news from the battlefield: *Two of the party's best known conservatives, Jack F. Kemp, the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development who was a Presidential candidate in 1988, and Representative Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the minority whip who hopes to be the next Republican leader of the House, openly rebelled against Mr. Bush's decision to raise taxes to get a budget deal with Democrats and are still battling the White House over domestic policy. *Conservatives of various stripes are talking about a challenge to Mr. Bush for the 1992 Presidential nomination. Pete duPont, the former Delaware Governor and another candidate for the Republican nomination in 1988, is setting up a political committee that some conservatives hope will serve as a vehicle for another Presidential campaign. Aides to Mr. duPont say these are pipe dreams of frustrated conservatives. *Mr. Sununu is barely on speaking terms with Mr. Gingrich and, in a seperate feud, has blocked the President from signing fund-raising letters on behalf of the House Republican Campaign Committee so long as Edward J. Rollins, one of the Republican Party's most outspoken political strategists, is in charge. Mr. Rollins's offense was to suggest during the midterm campaigns that Republican candidates should separate themselves from Mr. Bush's flip-flops on taxes. The grumbling on the right has become so loud that one Republican entrepreneur has even carved out a successful market by selling buttons with the message, "Dan Quayle now." So far, most of this is of fascination to a few thousand political insiders. But Republican operatives fear that the confusion is beginning to plant doubts in the public mind about the competence of the President. That would be nothing more than an irritant if the economy, that great mover of public opinion, were headed up. But it is the last thing Mr. Bush needs as the economy heads down, dragging the President's political standing with it. An Old Argument in New Light Mr. Bush took a list of potential party chairmen to Camp David this weekend. But some Republicans say that what may be more important is who he names to run his re-election campaign. That is the person who will probably emerge as chief political adviser and will provide the counterweight to Mr. Sununu that has been missing since Mr. Atwater became ill. Some of what is going on is a battle for control of the domestic policy agenda. "We are in the middle of an argument which a lot of us thought ended in 1989," Mr. Gingrich said. "There really is a fundemental difference between the managerial/accommodationist approach to the welfare state and the reform/replacement approach." Ideological conservatives like Mr. Gingrich would like the White House to champion a program of low taxes, curtailed bureaucracy, freer markets and the use of Federal funds to increase individual choices in areas like education. A White House conservative, Jim Pinkerton, called this program "the new paradigm" for a post-New Deal conservative agenda. That led to an inside battle when the budget director, Richard G. Darman, seemed to make fun of the idea in a recent speech. Mr. Gingrich, a proponent of Mr. Pinkerton's thesis, said Mr. Darman should be dismissed if he did not embrace the effort to forge a new conservative agenda. Mr. Darman and Mr. Gingrich have held about 12 hours of meetings since their blow-up, Mr. Gingrich's staff reports. The mood between the two men is said to be better now, and Mr. Gingrich's camp at least credits Mr. Darman with showing enough respect for the new paradigmists to debate their ideas. But the big test, the conservatives say, will be what Mr. Bush says in his budget and State of the Union Message about domestic policy. Mr. Sununu tried to address some of that in a speech this week, saying that whether it was called the new paradigm or something else the cornerstone of Mr. Bush's domestic policy was the encouragement of capitalism and the expansion of free markets.

An Army supply compound in the Saudi desert is well stocked and resourceful; it even trucks in sand for sandbags when it runs short. Page 9.

President Bush said today that the direct talks he has proposed to Iraq would be "on hold" until President Saddam Hussein agreed to receive Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d no later than Jan. 3. Mr. Bush's remarks at a White House news conference, along with statements by Iraqi officials that they want the meeting held on Jan. 12, suggest that what is at issue is not so much conflicting schedules as conflicting strategies.

Leaders of the European Community agreed in principle today to give the Soviet Union $2.4 billion in emergency food and medical aid and technical assistance, amid warnings that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev must be bolstered against challenges from hard-liners. They also discussed the possibility of offering hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid to Eastern Europe after hearing a report that democratic advances in those formerly Communist countries were imperiled by economic crisis. Help for the European Community's troubled eastern cousins dominated talks as the 12 national leaders gathered in Rome to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis and to propel the community toward fuller political and monetary integration. Except for Britain, all have agreed to move toward a single European currency, and they are now expected to set in motion a process that could ultimately lead to regional foreign and security policies. A Less Combative Stance The summit meeting, held here because Italy holds the community's rotating six-month presidency, marked the international debut of Britain's new Prime Minister, John Major, who has sought from the start to project a less combative image than his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher. "I don't think anybody in the community wants a confrontation," he said. Mrs. Thatcher's refusal to agree with her colleagues on rapid monetary union left her isolated at a meeting here in October, and the political fallout at home led to her being unseated. Though Mr. Major took a gentler tone, he suggested that Britain still had strong reservations about a process that could eventually involve a significant loss of national sovereignty for each of the 12 members. Price of Aiding Gorbachev But the emphasis today was on the Soviet Union's troubles, and it was evident that the Western European leaders consider it at least as important to support Mr. Gorbachev politically against challenges from hard-liners as it is to feed Soviet citizens acing winter shortages. Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany told his 11 colleagues at the meeting that "quite clearly, old hard-liners in the Soviet Union are trying to hinder developments with deliberate sabotage." A spokesman quoted Mr. Kohl as saying that it was worth the price to help Mr. Gorbachev now because "it would cost us much more" if he should fail. A similar warning came from Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Secretary, who told journalists, "It is not in the interests of Europe, it is not in the interests of Britain, that the Soviet Union should lapse into anarchy or that the Soviet Union should fall back into the hands of some backward-looking tyrant." Some of the European Community's 12 members, notably Germany, have already begun on their own to ship food and medicine stockpiles to Moscow, but the program essentially decided today goes considerably further. It also augments an announcement by President Bush two days ago that he had approved up to $1 billion in United States Federal loans to allow Moscow to buy food and other agricultural products. Admission to I.M.F. The European program calls for swift distribution of $1 billion in food and medical assistance, with care to be taken that the aid truly reaches the Soviet people and does not fall by the wayside or into the hands of black marketeers. Several leaders expressed concern today that Moscow's real problem is not a shortage of food, but rather a distribution system that has broken down. How much food $1 billion would buy depends on what commodities are purchased. At today's price, $1 billion would buy about 400 million bushels of wheat. Figured another way, the Agriculture Department has determined that $70 a week is the minimum required in the United States to feed a family of four. At that rate, $1 billion would feed about 15 million families for a week. "All, without exception, agree to give the Soviet Union immediate aid," said Pio Mastrobuoni, the chief Italian Government spokesman. But there were "slight differences" among the 12 leaders, Mr. Mastrobuoni said, on how much of the package should come as direct grants and how much as loans. The Western Europeans also agreed in principle to give Moscow $1.4 billion over the next two years -- about $550 million in 1991 and $850 million in 1992 -- in the form of technical assistance for improvements in transportation, energy supplies and telecommunications. But the head of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, cautioned the 12 leaders that ultimately they could not help the Soviet Union by themselves, and that they should smooth Moscow's admission into the International Monetary Fund as soon as possible. Loans and Shaky Finances Mr. Delors proposed that two-thirds of the $1 billion emergency aid come in the form of credits because, he argued, outright donations would send the wrong signal to hungry nations in Africa and Asia that also need help. But nations that favored direct grants, including Germany, France and Britain, contended that loans would further weaken the Soviet Union's already shaky finances. As for Eastern Europe, Mr. Delors recommended $340 million in emergency food and energy assistance for Bulgaria and Romania, and reported that Czechoslovakia had asked for at least $900 million. Hungary has already received $470 million in community help and has asked for $660 million. Between the collapse of the Eastern bloc's creaky trading system and higher oil prices brought on by the Persian Gulf crisis, Eastern Europe's emerging democracies have lost billions of dollars, Mr. Delors told the 12 leaders. According to a spokesman, he said, "There is a grave risk that these countries will become bankrupt and the democratic reforms will be stifled." KREMLIN EXPLAINS SHORTAGES MOSCOW, Dec. 14 (AP) -- Soviet food shortages are caused entirely by distribution problems and economic disarray, not a lack of food, and emergency steps are needed to resolve the crisis, an adviser to Mr. Gorbachev, Stanislav S. Shatalin, said today. Mr. Shatalin said in an interview: "Hunger is not an issue. There's enough food. The issue is how to find it and distribute it so that it doesn't get into the hands of the mafia, saboteurs and corrupted elements." The newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda reported today that the K.G.B., searching Moscow warehouses for hidden food, found nearly 2 metric tons of meat, 750 cans of instant coffee and 880 pounds of butter in one shop.