GOP names a speaker. Kirkpatrick to address convention

Republican officials said yesterday, one day after the Democrats named Texan Ann Richards as their convention keynote speaker, that Jeane J. Kirkpatrick would be ``one of the featured speakers'' at the GOP convention in August. The Republicans announced the convention role for Ms. Kirkpatrick after the Democrats said they had chosen Ms. Richards, Texas state treasurer, the second woman in party history to give the address, to deliver the keynote speech and ``set the tone'' for the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta next month.

Kirkpatrick, a former Democrat, gave a widely publicized speech attacking the Democrats at the 1984 Republican convention. Republican Party chief Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. said the announcement of the keynote speaker for the New Orleans meeting would probably come in the next 10 days.

In a CBS-TV interview yesterday, Richards mentioned fellow Texan Barbara Jordan's keynote speech in 1976 and added, ``That year the Democrats went to the White House, so maybe they saw my selection, having another female, as a good omen.''