November 24, 1992

Eager to put his own stamp on economic policy, President-elect Bill Clinton promises to do what every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt has done: come up with a new program to create jobs. After President Bush took a largely passive attitude toward creating jobs -- and paid a heavy price for the sluggish economy on Nov. 3 -- Mr. Clinton has made it clear that he plans to be more aggressive.

Exasperated with the failure of the United States to reduce its budget deficit, an organization representing 24 industrial nations said today in an unusually blunt report that the American Government must consider increasing taxes. It suggested a 25-cent-a-gallon increase in the tax on gasoline and a 5 percent national sales tax. The report, issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said the Federal deficit of nearly $300 billion threatened to push up interest rates around the world as well as undermine the American Government's plans to increase investment.

Capital Cities/ABC Inc. named Robert A. Iger as president of the ABC Television Network Group yesterday. Mr. Iger, currently the president of the network's entertainment division, succeeds John B. Sias, who is moving into an advisory role with the company.

France acknowledged today that it had no legal authority to veto a farm trade agreement between the European Community and the United States, but insisted it did have the right to block community acceptance of a broader global trade agreement. The fear of a French veto had hung over the farm agreement reached Friday after Agriculture Minister Jean-Pierre Soisson, and then Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy, called the compromise unacceptable. While neither official referred to a veto, the harsh remarks were interpreted by some trade officials and many journalists as a threat of such action.

In a stormy court session marked by the judge's threatening lawyers with contempt for shouting in front of the jury, the mother of the mildly retarded woman who is central to the Glen Ridge sex assault case said under persistent questioning today that her daughter flirted with and propositioned teen-age boys. The mother's acknowledgement came after she had spent three days resisting a barrage of questions from defense lawyers insinuating that her daughter, who has an I.Q. of 64, was promiscuous and sexually active before March 1, 1989, when the state charges that she was assaulted.