TERROR IN OKLAHOMA CITY : Senate Plans Quick Action on Passing Anti-Terrorism Laws : Congress: Reaction to Oklahoma City bombing draws bipartisan support. Broader power for law enforcement is promised.

Senate leaders, returning Monday from their two-week Easter recess, put proposed new anti-terrorist laws on the legislative fast track and vowed to give law enforcement agencies broader powers to head off attacks such as last week’s Oklahoma City bombing.

“Partisanship . . . stops at evil’s edge,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) declared as he promised swift action on a bipartisan package of anti-terrorism measures requested by the Clinton Administration.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) also promised quick action to fold the Clinton Administration’s newest counterterrorism proposals into an anti-terrorism bill pending in the Senate. Pledging to “give this initiative the fast-track consideration it deserves,” Dole said the bill could come to the floor and be passed as early as the middle of next week.

The House is not returning from its Easter recess until next Monday but GOP leadership sources predicted that it would conduct early hearings and pass a similar, if not identical, bill by mid-May. “Cooperation with the Administration will be the watchword here,” a GOP House Judiciary Committee aide said.

Mutual outrage over the carnage in Oklahoma City was clearly the force drawing together Republicans and Democrats who had gone into the Easter recess expecting a continuation of the partisan wrangling that occurred over the GOP’s “contract with America.”

“We were barely on speaking terms when we went home earlier this month,” a senior Democratic leadership aide noted, recalling the bitter divisiveness of the legislative battles that raged over the GOP’s first 100-day agenda. “We’re coming back”--on the issue of terrorism, at least--”ready to display a degree of unity we haven’t seen since the debate over the Persian Gulf War resolution” four years ago, he added.

The Clinton proposals would:

* Make it easier for immigration authorities to expel illegal immigrants with suspected terrorist ties.

* Make planning a terrorist act a federal crime.

* Tighten laws against raising money in the United States for terrorism abroad.

* Create an interagency Domestic Counterterrorism Center led by the FBI, and a special FBI counterterrorist and counterintelligence fund.

* Make it easier for the FBI to trace telephone calls and to get information from credit agencies, hotels, motels, airlines and other transportation carriers.

But while Republicans and Democrats were remarkably united over those proposals, partisan sniping crept into the debate as it began to shift, inevitably, to the emotional issue of gun control.

Gun-control proponents called on Republican leaders to postpone next month’s planned effort to repeal the ban on assault weapons passed by Congress only last year. They cited the Oklahoma City investigation’s focus on a right-wing paramilitary militia group as evidence that such laws are needed.

Publicly, Republicans denounced what they said were Democratic attempts to score political points over the Oklahoma tragedy. Privately, however, several Republicans conceded that opponents of gun control have been thrown on the defensive and that the timetable for trying to roll back the assault weapons ban may have to be altered.

The partisan cross-fire over the weapons ban erupted when Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leading proponent of stronger gun controls, sent a letter to Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), urging them to leave the ban intact.

Accusing the National Rifle Assn. of inflaming the passions of right-wing extremist groups with its anti-government rhetoric on the subject, Schumer wrote that another divisive debate over assault weapons “will send the wrong message to paramilitary extremists.”

Gingrich, who was on his way back to Washington, had no immediate response but Dole fired off an icy reply that began: “I received your letter earlier today (and) knowing of your penchant for publicity, I reviewed it in that spirit.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how some people will exploit anything for political benefit,” said Hatch, adding angrily that the issue raised by the Oklahoma City bombing “has to do with our anti-terrorism laws, not gun control.”

Pressing what they saw as an advantage, however, gun-control advocates argued that bombing suspect Timothy J. McVeigh’s possible links to a right-wing paramilitary group in Michigan demonstrate that Wednesday’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building goes to the heart of the debate over violence and guns in America.

“Most of these militias were formed largely in the wake of the passage of the Brady bill (which mandates a waiting period before the purchase of handguns) and the assault weapons ban and the fact is these groups have an avowed hostility to any gun-control laws,” said Bob Walker, legislative director of Handgun Control Inc., a gun-control lobbying group.

Walker said gun-control advocates will launch “a nationwide campaign . . . in every state and community of this country” to preserve the assault weapons ban.

While Republicans clearly were being thrown on the defensive over gun control, Democrats concerned about the constitutionality of some of the measures in the counterterrorism bill conceded privately that their side of the debate appeared all but lost.

Among the provisions that have raised the concerns of civil libertarians are expanded wire tapping authority for the FBI and the creation of special “terrorism” courts to expedite the deportation of illegal immigrants with suspected ties to terrorist groups.

“Every time an incident like this has happened, the government has reacted by giving the FBI more power to infiltrate organizations, to wiretap and to spy on people,” said Irv Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Arab-American groups, fearing that the counterterrorism bill could be misused to target Muslims for political persecution, cited a spate of anti-Arab incidents in the wake of the bombing as they appealed Monday for President Clinton to meet with them to discuss the legislation.

But while noting that there were “legitimate concerns” about the “infringement of constitutional rights,” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) also said that there is “strong support” among both Democrats and Republicans for everything Clinton has requested in the counterterrorism bill.

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.