EW YORK - The third and final debate between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rick Lazio yesterday turned out to be the most pointed and punchy of them all.
Seated at the same small table, the Senate candidates hurled charges and countercharges, often talking over each other's words, sometimes at such volume that the moderator, local newsman Gabe Pressman, intervened, once exclaiming, ''Order, order.''
Still, the informal session, which was taped in a Midtown television studio in the afternoon for national broadcast last night, with no live audience, allowed the two to outline disagreements most clearly on a broad range of issues.
A light moment came when Pressman quoted a few venomous lines from their press releases in recent weeks and asked both to name three things they like about the other.
Clinton, smiling, cited Lazio's family life, his hard work, and the fact that ''he's an attractive young man.'' Lazio, smiling more broadly, returned, ''You're an attractive woman,'' noted her good record as a mother, and added, ''I'm sure you have a very nice family, as well.''
Other than that exchange, it was a slugfest.
After one Clinton answer, Lazio began, ''Can I just try to get the truth through for a moment?'' After an earlier Lazio statement, Clinton said with a sigh, ''You don't know where to start with Mr. Lazio - he does go on.''
Lazio accused Clinton of sending out contradictory messages on Middle East policy that have ''encouraged violence'' by Palestinians. Clinton accused the Long Island congressman of voting to weaken safety standards in construction after taking a $1 million campaign donation from the housing industry.
Clinton reacted to the Middle East gibe by citing endorsements she has received from the Jewish newspaper The Forward and Holocaust writer Elie Wiesel. Lazio called her housing attack ''absolutely false,'' saying, ''Don't make things up,'' and added, ''There's one thing I will not tolerate and that is being dragged down in the mud.''
The two enter the final days of their race - the hottest and most expensive Senate contest in the country - with Clinton leading in two separate polls, 50 percent to 43 percent.
Last night, after the debate, both candidates headed upstate - normally a Republican-dominated region whose voters are currently split about evenly. In recent weeks, Clinton has also made gains in the suburbs and now leads among white women, who once rejected her candidacy by a wide margin. She is, and has been, the near-unanimous favorite of black and Hispanic women voters.
On the issues, which were discussed in greater detail than at previous debates perhaps because of the session's looser format, the two disagreed most saliently on education.
Lazio supported vouchers, though without using that word, and called for testing all teachers every five years. He accused Clinton of being ''trapped by the teachers' union'' and said the school reforms she supported in Arkansas while her husband was governor there were ''a disaster.''
Clinton opposed vouchers, called for testing only new teachers, and said that her reforms in Arkansas were a success.
Both said they favored abortion rights. However, Clinton supports Medicaid funding for abortion, while Lazio said that should be left up to individual states.
Clinton also said she favored partial-birth abortion only if the mother's life or health were at stake. Lazio favored it only to save the mother's life, saying that allowing such abortions on grounds of ''health'' was a ''nebulous'' standard that would ''eviscerate the whole idea of a ban.''
They argued at some length over which of the two was more responsible for a bill that funds treatment for breast and cervical cancer.
In his concluding remarks, Lazio reemphasized themes that he has stressed throughout the campaign, saying, ''The election comes down to one single word - trust,'' and he noted that he has lived his whole life in New York.
Clinton, who has been attacked as a carpetbagger for never living or working in the state before running to be its senator, emphasized her travels across all 62 of the state's counties. She also said she plans to live in New York no matter what the election results and cited the World Series, whose teams were dominated by immigrants, as proof that ''people who weren't born in New York could deliver for New York.''
