February 8, 1993

The Clinton Administration intends to create a supercommittee in the State Department to shape a unified strategy toward Russia and the other former Soviet republics, but has no intention of immediately increasing foreign aid to the area, senior Administration officials say. In an effort to avoid what it considers President Bush's haphazard approach to the problem, the Administration has chosen Strobe Talbott, a journalist and author who has written extensively about the Soviet Union, to head the committee in his capacity as Ambassador-at-Large to Russia and the other newly independent republics.

It was just before Thanksgiving, and Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez was inching toward another confrontation, this time with a Queens school board over his mandate to teach tolerance for gay men and lesbians. The Queens Borough President, Claire Shulman, who began her public life as a P.T.A. president and knows the turbulent political terrain in Queens, offered to help out.

The Communist Party's main archive, which holds millions of pieces to the vast puzzle of Soviet history, is only one depository for 204 million separate files controlled by Moscow.

The capital is running a fever, gripped by the frenzy that sets in every so often when morality and expediency get tangled up. This time, Bill Clinton is in the soup. Mr. Clinton, who came to Washington as a populist and economic savior of the middle class, has once again been diverted by questions of the ethical standards and calculated diversity of his Administration.

After being cheered by the Clinton Administration's initial interest in their plan to loosen bank regulations as an economic stimulus, the nation's bankers are running into increasing skepticism about the merits of the plan. The bankers officially kicked off a lobbying campaign against red tape in lending last week, timing it to closely follow the introduction of legislation to ease bank regulations by Senator Richard C. Shelby, a moderate Alabama Democrat.