CLINTON LAWYERS SEEK DELAY ON HARASSMENT SUIT.

Byline: The New York Times

Telling the justices that the question was one of ``extraordinary national importance,'' lawyers for President Clinton filed a Supreme Court appeal Wednesday seeking to delay all proceedings in a sexual harassment suit until Clinton leaves office.

The petition represented the last step in what has so far been a losing effort to put off a civil damage suit brought against the president by a former Arkansas clerical employee, Paula Corbin Jones, whose allegation that Clinton made crude sexual advances to her in 1991 in a hotel room in Little Rock, Ark., has raised the prospect that a trial could become an embarrassing election-year sideshow.

The court is likely to act on the appeal within the next month. If the justices turn it down, pretrial proceedings could begin as early as this summer. If the court agrees to hear the case, the proceedings would be delayed for months.

Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas at the time of the alleged advances, has vigorously denied the accusation by Jones and has said he cannot remember meeting the former state employee, who is seeking $700,000 in damages.

In January, a panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in St. Louis, ruled that there was no basis for deferring either a trial or pretrial proceedings until Clinton left the White House. The Constitution ``did not create a monarchy'' when it established the office of the presidency, Judge Pasco M. Bowman II said in the appeals court's 2-1 decision.

Earlier, Judge Susan Webber Wright of Federal District Court in Little Rock had ruled that while the trial should be deferred, lawyers for Jones could begin interviewing witnesses, including Clinton, to preserve their testimony while memories were still fresh.

Supreme Court precedents give presidents absolute immunity from civil suits arising from actions they take while in office. The court has never addressed the question of how a lawsuit growing out of actions an incumbent president took before reaching the White House should be handled.

In the appeal filed Wednesday, Clinton's lawyers, while emphasizing that they are seeking only a delay of the trial and not immunity from liability, argue that the concerns the court expressed in granting immunity for a president's official actions also apply to Clinton's unusual situation.