By CHARLENE L. FU

Associated Press Writer

BEIJING, July 27 (AP) -- China hopes that delegates to an international women's conference in Beijing will spend plenty of time sightseeing. Thousands of them may not be able to do much else. The Beijing area is the site for September's U.N.-sponsored Fourth World Conference on Women and for a companion forum for private groups who hope to influence the government representatives at the conference.

Preparations for the private forum have generated great controversy since the Chinese government announced suddenly in April that it was changing the venue. The forum was to have been held at a stadium in the center of Beijing, but the Chinese organizers said it had structural faults and moved the site to Huairou, an hour's drive from Beijing. But the Huairou site has structural faults too: It can't handle the expected 20,000 delegates.

Even with more than 80 large tents and an athletic field, only 10,000 people can gather at Huairou at any given time, organizing committee secretary-general Xu Zhijian told a news conference today. That's about half the number expected to be accredited to attend. `We hope those people who cannot participate in the meeting will take our buses to tourist sites and recreation centers," said Wan Siquan, deputy secretary of the organizing committee.

The last-minute selection of Huairou as the site for the private groups' meetings drew criticisms from many fronts. Diplomats charge that China did not want thousands of activists in the streets of Beijing promoting causes such as human rights, Tibetan independence and opposition to abortion.

The Chinese organizers have stressed since the April decision to move to Huairou that the facilities there would be adequate. But today they said that there will only be two large meeting halls, able to accommodate 1,500 and 2,000 people each. That would be far from adequate for plenary sessions. Housing for only 10,000 people will be available in Huairou. Organizers did not say where the remaining private delegates would stay.

Xu said access to the main U.N. conference would be given only to some of the private delegates, but did not say how many or by what criteria permission would be given.

Nineteen groups have been denied permission to attend the private forum. They include Tibetan advocacy groups that were blocked by China, which argued that Tibet as a part of China would be represented by the Chinese delegation. Iran also won bans on six groups on the grounds that they favored violence and were linked to terrorism.