Daly said he could not provide an "ironclad guarantee" to the corporation that several community groups in Cambridge would not oppose the Aliston museum site.

But Daly said "no one can say there won't be dissent in Cambridge to any event including the Second Coming. I do believe we've made great progress with many persons and organizations in Cambridge.

Daly said he had a number of "positive meetings" with community leaders in Cambridge about locating the museum at the Aliston site.

He said he has engaged Benjamin Thompson Associates, a Cambridge architecture firm currently working on the Business School housing project, and Wilbur Smith Associates, a consultant firm, to work out traffic problems and Cambridge groups' objections to the Aliston alternative.

Daly said he did not yet know what finances would be involved in hiring the companies.

Cabot, Cabot and Forbes, a Cambridge construction firm which has worked with I.M. Pel, the Kennedy Library architect, on other projects, has volunteered to make "financial analysis of the entire project," Daly said.

City Councilor Saundra Graham of Riverside, an area where traffic may be increased by locating the museum in Aliston, said the Aliston location may cause "terrible damage" to the people in Riverside.

Graham, who said she attended one of the meetings with Daly last week, said Harvard has shown her "nothing, absolutely nothing substantial," on the Aliston side.

She said if Harvard tries to pressure the Riverside area into reacting positively to the site in the two weeks left before the corporation meeting, "we might say no.