UNITED NATIONS--The General Assembly yesterday overwhelmingly deplored the U.S. denial of a visa for Yasser Arafat, the first step towards a protest meeting in Geneva to hear the PLO chairman next month.

The vote in the 159-member assembly was 151-2. The United States and Israel voted against the resolution. Britain abstained. Other nations were absent.

Arab diplomats, who sponsored the resolution, said later that they planned to move swiftly to introduce another resolution shifting the General Assembly to Geneva in mid-December to hear Arafat speak on the declaration of an independent Palestinian state.

The resolution adopted yesterday requested U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to report back on the U.S. response today.

But Secretary of State George P. Shultz declared earlier yesterday that the United States would not reverse its decision, that Arafat be barred because he condones and encourages terrorism.

U.S. Ambassador Herbert S. Okun, the acting U.N. representative, told the assembly that the U.S. government "does not agree with the tone or substance of the resolution and voted against it..."

"The denial of a visa to Mr. Arafat is fully consistent with the Headquarters Agreement between the United States and the United Nations and this includes our right to protect our national security," Okun said.

The 1947 U.S.-U.N. Headquarters Agreement requires visas to be granted to U.N. diplomats and people invited on U.N. business.

The adopted resolution "deplores the failure by the host country to approve granting of the requested entry visa," and urges the United States to reconsider and reverse its decision.

The U.S. decision to bar Arafat, who spoke to the General Assembly in 1974, caused an international storm.

Undersecretary-General Joseph Verner Reed said the U.N. Secretariat was making plans to move to Geneva in mid-December to hear Arafat explain the November 15 declaration of an independent Palestinian state and PLO plans for a Middle East peace settlement.

Arafat has said he wants to explain the new position taken by the Palestine National Council, which acts as the PLO legislature, in implicitly recognizing Israel by accepting U.N. resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

If the session moves to Geneva, the world body's European headquarters, it would be the first time the assembly has done so in protest of an action by the host country. Arab diplomats say they have the necessary majority to accomplish it.