Effort to Delay Global Trade Vote Appears Thwarted : Legislation: House leaders say enough bipartisan support exists to pass GATT pact today. White House is blamed for making some miscues.

The Clinton Administration was thrown into a scramble Tuesday, one day before the scheduled vote on a global trade agreement in the House, after the pact’s opponents and even some of its key supporters tried to delay the vote until after the November elections.

By the close of the day, however, the House leadership decided it had sufficient support to conduct the vote today. The legislation would implement a massive revision of the rules governing global commerce, expanding their reach and slashing tariffs by an average of 40% around the world.

“We’re going forward with it, and we think we have the votes to pass it, with both parties participating,” said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.).

With few major successes in Congress during his second year in office and the eventual approval of the agreement not in serious doubt, his aides said, Clinton has portrayed the trade measure as one of crucial legislative importance.

The confusion surrounding the issue came just at a point when the fog of political pressures should have been lifting. It was another example, critics said, of legislation crucial to the President being threatened by the sort of White House miscues that almost sank the crime bill.

One key ally, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed frustration at having to go to the mat repeatedly to bail out the Administration on some of its most important issues.

Opponents of the measure mounted a last-ditch effort to put off a vote until late November or early December, which would force the House into a lame-duck session in tandem with the Senate session that is scheduled to vote on the trade plan on Dec. 1.

At the heart of the debate over when to conduct the vote is congressional skittishness in dealing with trade issues, which used to have little trouble gaining wide bipartisan support. The dispute over the pact, which rewrites the 47-year-old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, follows an even more precarious battle over the North American Free Trade Agreement last year.

The 123-nation GATT accord would cut worldwide tariffs by about $740 billion, reduce other barriers to trade and extend the rules of world trade to services and intellectual property, such as computer programs and drug patents.

Appeals for a delay in voting on the measure fell on friendly ears in the House on Tuesday as members began to wonder whether, just before adjourning to campaign for reelection, they wanted to cast votes on an issue that has organized labor up in arms and has drawn diverse opposition, from consumer advocate Ralph Nader to conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan.

“We don’t need to rub the nose of our labor base. That essentially is the plea we are getting,” said Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) on the reluctance of Democrats, even those who support the trade agreement.

Before the debate today, supporters must clear a procedural hurdle by getting at least 218 votes to move the issue onto the House floor. Majority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) said Republicans had indicated they would supply no more than 50 of the necessary votes.

Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who supports the trade measure, made it clear that he and other Republicans might do their best to delay the matter. Gingrich’s comments came in a private meeting to which Foley had invited representatives of major business organizations and companies supporting the trade plan.

“Newt came in and read the group the riot act,” said a participant. Gingrich told them, in effect, “ ‘I’m not supplying a single vote. My members don’t want to give the President a victory,’ ” the participant said.

A Gingrich aide said the second-ranking Republican in the House was angry that Clinton was trying to push the measure through at the last minute, rather than having sent it to the House during the summer.

“We’d have had a month to work this and get a nice handsome vote” for a trade plan Gingrich would ultimately like to see put into place, the aide said.

The measure will pass, said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), long a supporter of the agreement, “but not with the 350 it would have had in August, totally because of the mismanagement of this issue by the White House.”

At midafternoon, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta predicted that at least 170 Democrats and 60 Republicans--12 more than needed--would vote for the legislation.

But he said the White House had misjudged the roadblock it had encountered in the Senate, when Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) forced the two-month delay in the Senate vote last week. Panetta said that the issue had been allowed to get “caught up in the kind of general shooting back and forth that we’re seeing.”

Hollings conducted the first of a series of hearings on GATT by his Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Tuesday. A second, with U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, was scheduled for today.

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.