Harvard has filed suit against three area hotels in a pre-emptive effort to prevent them from winning up to $1.6 million from the University in a potential suit of their own for compensatory damages--and much more in possible punitive damages.

Harvard's lawsuits, filed late last month in Middlesex Country Superior Court, stem from the University's decision in August 1991 not to sponsor the Eighth International Conference on AIDS in Boston.

The move resulted in Harvard canceling reservations of several hundred hotel rooms, banquet halls and conference facilities at the Marriott Copley Place, Park Plaza and Sheraton Boston hotels.

Harvard booked the rooms in early 1990 and canceled in late August 1991, when University and conference administrators decided not to hold the 10-day meeting in the United States. More than ten thousand scientists, activists, health care officials and media representatives were expected to attend.

According to Harvard's suits, the move was a necessary response to restrictions barring HIV-positive individuals from entering the United States. In complaints filed last month, the University asked to be declared not liable for their decision.

Harvard AIDS Institute officials, who were to co-sponsor the Boston conference, lobbied through the summer of 1991 against the restrictions, which dated back to 1987. But Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan's suggestion that HIV be removed from a list of infections barring entrance to the U.S. was met with reluctance in the Justice Department.

When the Justice Department, which runs the Immigration and Naturalization Service, failed to render a decision on the list before a Bush administration-imposed August 2, 1991 deadline, AIDS Institute officials announced they would move the conference to Amsterdam.

But in their response to the lawsuits, which requests that the case be decided through arbitration, the Marriott and Park Plaza contended that Harvard was aware of regulations barring the immigration of HIV-carriers when it agreed to book the hotel rooms in early 1990.

In addition, the hotels argued, Harvard could have gone ahead with the conference if it had been willing to obtain a waiver of the restrictions from the Department of Immigration and Naturalization. Such a waiver permitted individuals with HIV to attend the 1990 International Conference on AIDS, held in San Francisco.

"Harvard went about making extensive arrangements for this conference in 1989 and 1990 even though the 1987 regulation was on the books," Hank Shafran, a spokesperson for the Marriott Copley said yesterday. "Even with that regulation on the books, Harvard could have gone to the Department of Health and Human Services and requested a waiver for the 10-day period of the conference."

According to University Attorney Robert R. Donia, Harvard had reason to believe the restriction would jeff reversed by the time of the conferener.

A walver, even if obtained, should not have lielped, Donin said, because the World-Health Organisation and the International AIDS - Society had vowed to boycott the event and several activist groups had said they would protest it if the immigration ban were not dropped.

"Once the Immigration of 1990 was passed, we felt that the problem had been contacted Secretary Louis sullivan of the Department of Health and Human Services announced that he was going to take HIV off the exclusion list," Donin said. "But then the Bush administration changed course and that never happened."

Shafran said that once the damage was realized, the hotels sought to much a settlement of the losses with Harvard. The hotels would likely have accepted a lump sum payment of a portion of the damages or an agreement from the University to provide them with future business, he said.

Shafran said Harvard refused to negotiate a settlement, prompting the hotels to threaten the University with a lawsuit late last year.

Marriott and the Park Plaza claimed in their petition for arbitration that University officials threatened them with a boycott if they pursued their case. Donin said last night the charge was untrue.

The Sheraton Hotel, which is represented by the same attorney as the Marriott and the Park Plaza, did not sign the petition for arbitration. Its case has been moved to U.S. District Court