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The U.N. General Assembly may leave New York next September if the United States insists on closing the Palestine Liberation Organization mission here, officials said Friday. The PLO was invited by the United Nations to participate in U.N. meetings without the right to vote and the threat to close its mission has caused controversy in the world body.

The United States plans to attend a U.N. General Assembly debate next week in Geneva on the Palestinian question, the State Department said Tuesday. The General Assembly moved the debate to Geneva from U.N. headquarters in New York after the Reagan Administration refused to grant a visa to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz's veto of a visa for PLO chief Yasser Arafat is coming under increasing criticism from both U.S. and Israeli terrorism analysts, who contend that international Palestinian terrorism is in fact in marked decline. They also charge that the vast majority of incidents have been carried out not by the Palestine Liberation Organization mainstream but by splinter groups that also are Arafat's adversaries.

A spokesman for Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) on Sunday denied a published report that President-elect George Bush has chosen his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, to be U.N. ambassador. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday that Bush had selected Elizabeth Dole to represent the United States at the world body and quoted congressional sources close to the senator as calling the nomination "a done deal."

Vice President George Bush, accorded a platform that will emphasize his international experience, will deliver the American response at a U. N. Security Council debate today on the destruction by a U.S. warship of an Iranian jetliner carrying 290 people, the White House announced Wednesday.