F. Donald McHenry, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said last night he "wasn't in on the discussion" leading to President Carter's apology for a U.S. vote in the Security Council Saturday which condemned the presence of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

The President's Monday night statement, however, did not represent a change in the U.S. position that Israeli settlement of occupied Arab land is illegal, McHenry told a crowd of 200 at the Law School Forum.

Carter called Saturday's vote a mistake which resulted from a "failure in communications." McHenry said the reversal came about because references to East Jerusalem had not been deleted from the Security Council resolution.

Carter "did not intend Jerusalem to be included in the resolution," he said.

Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, annexing the latter, in the June, 1967 Six-Day War. "The U.S. has always taken the position that Jerusalem is an occupied territory," McHenry said.

"The question which arises is, is it wise to restate the position at this time?" he added.

Denying that the original vote condemning the resolution was allying with "Israel's enemies," McHenry said "when we counsel a country not to violate the law, or to create obstacles to peace, or to make more difficult a final resolution, we are acting in Israel's interests and not hand in hand with Israel's enemies."

Other countries will never perceive the United States as a friend to Israel's enemies as long as "the U.S. helps Israel to the tune of two billion dollars a year" and is the only country that consistently sides with Israel in the United Nations, he said.

At one point during McHenry's discussion of the vote in the Security Council a heckler stood up and shouted, "You lie." The heckler then tried to speak, but McHenry swiftly fielded another question.

"The U.S. will have a difficult time" dealing with both its allies and Third World countries in the United Nations as a result of the reversal, McHenry said, but he added, "We'll work at it."

McHenry said he thinks the threat of the U.N. commission to pull out of Iran did not influence the announcement yesterday that the militant students will turn over the hostages to the Revolutionary Council.

"I'm not willing to take the announcement as a final statement. I've seen too many statements from Iran made one day and repudiated the next," McHenry said, provoking mild laughter from the audience.

McHenry began the forum by stressing the Carter administration's effort to elevate African issues from what he termed its former status as the "bottom rung of America's foreign policy."

"The U.S. played no small role in helping overcome obstacles" in the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia settlement, McHenry said, adding he was encouraged by Robert Mugabe's statements that he would include blacks and whites in his government.

The settlement of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian conflict may facilitate the settlement of the political unrest in Nambia, McHenry added