Women's sign-up separate issue

President Carter was expected to ask that registration of women for a possible peacetime draft be considered separately in Congress from the issue of registering young men, aged 18 and up. Thomas P. O'Neill III, Speaker of the House of Representatives, has predicted that registration of women would not pass the House.

The purpose of separating the issues would be to avoid endangering passage of the move to register men or appropriation of funds to reactivate the dormant Selective Service machinery, congressional sources said.

The Canadian external-affairs minister, Flora MacDonald, warned Thursday that although a new Conservative government in Canada would not ban American draft dodgers, it would put them on the bottom of immigration lists.