June 10, 1991

Whipped by the wind, the rain and, on a more personal note, whipped by underdog Jim Courier in the first five-set French Open men's final since another dark horse, Michael Chang, eliminated Stefan Edberg in 1989, Andre Agassi trudged away from his third Grand Slam finale in a familiar mood: despair. Today's final, an all-American affair featuring two halfway hostile contemporaries, was sandwiched between showers that splattered Roland Garros Stadium this afternoon. And for the bulk of five ungainly sets, forecasting an imminent champion was as impossible as deciphering the weather.

Western diplomats and experts are concerned by indications that China is seeking to increase its share of the world market for missiles. The Chinese military, the experts say, may begin shipments of two new kinds of missiles to Syria and Pakistan, and perhaps to other countries as well. The new missiles, which are said to be more accurate than the Soviet-designed Scuds used by Iraq in the Persian Gulf war, are thought to be at the end of the development stage and could be deployed soon.

Police officers shooting at a stolen van with seven youths inside killed two of them -- including a pregnant teen-ager -- and wounded four during a high-speed chase through Newark and Hillside, N.J., early yesterday. After the crash the police said they found a silver-plated pistol that they believed to be a starter's gun in the van. The police declined to say whether any shots were fired from the van.

In Battery Park, where 24,000 troops who served in the Persian Gulf will gather to bask in their "Welcome Home" parade today, tourists and New Yorkers basked in a hot Sunday sun yesterday and took in the parade preparations -- yellow ribbons painted on the pavement and white portable toilets placed along the sidewalks. Tourists talked of witnessing a piece of history. New Yorkers spoke of what would be left once that shining moment had passed. Two visitors from Britain sat on a park bench in the shadow of the United States Bankruptcy Court Building in lower Manhattan and marveled at the kind of uninhibited self-celebration that, in their view, happens only in America. "We don't do things like this in England," said Susan Yates, who lives near Manchester and is an employee of the British post office, the Royal Mail. In her crisp Bermuda shorts and crisp English accent, she added: "Unfortunately, they don't have parades. They welcome back soldiers very subtly."

If "they also serve who only stand and wait" becomes the axiom of the 1992 Presidential campaign, no Democrat can stand to wait longer than Gov. Mario M. Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo says he has no plans to run, no plans to make plans and no plans not to make plans. But the thirst for leadership in the Democratic Party and the vacuum that it is in the nature of political reporters to abhor even more than politicians (witness an earlier New York Governor's rush to fill the vacuum created by Hoover) prompt many to continue to discount Mr. Cuomo's repeated, if marginally less unequivocal, disavowals of candidacy.