November 21, 1992

By settling a bitter farm trade dispute with the United States today, the European Community has chosen to ignore strong French objections to the deal, but it is still unclear whether France will invoke its right to veto the agreement. In its first response tonight, France, which is Europe's largest exporter of farm products, criticized the accord, which was worked out by the community's negotiators.

New Twist to Passport Case The White House has told aides that they may destroy telephone logs, documents that Congressional investigators say they need. Page 7. Auto Anxiety in Hong Kong More than 1,300 expensive cars were stolen in the colony in the first nine months of this year, many of them taken to China by speedboats. Page 4. Mad About 'Lucia' The Metropolitan Opera audience waxed indignant at a new staging of "Lucia di Lammermoor." Edward Rothstein's review is on page 11.

In a nationwide push for power at the state and local levels, conservative Christian candidates won hundreds of races on Election Day, establishing themselves as a grass-roots political force and giving them a base from which to push for control of the Republican Party. Tallying the results of the sometimes obscure races for seats on school boards, city councils, state legislatures and the like, both they and their opponents agree that what is known as the religious right scored significant gains. Difficult to Identify The liberal lobbying group People for the American Way, which has led the fight against the religious right around the country, said fundamentalist Christian candidates had won about 40 percent of the 500 races it monitored nationwide. The fiercest battleground was California, but the movement also scored successes in states like Iowa, Kansas, Florida, Texas and Oregon. And People for the American Way estimated there were thousands more races in which it had not been able to identify the affiliations of the candidates.

As giddy as debutantes, the princes and the satraps of the Democratic Party gathered Thursday night at Pamela Harriman's house to tell Bill Clinton and each other how happy, how overjoyed, how positively transported they were to see power on the horizon at last. Robert S. Strauss, late of Moscow, and Katharine Graham, ever of The Washington Post, were there, and of course Warren M. Christopher and Vernon E. Jordan, the panjandrums of the transition. Representatives were there, and senators enough to stock a ball club, pinch-hitters and relief pitchers included -- Sasser and Bentsen and Lieberman and Mikulski and Harkin and Graham and Biden and Kerrey and Bumpers and Ford and Byrd and Mitchell and more.

The President-elect plans to hold at least one televised question-and-answer session with the American people before his inauguration. Page 8.