WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders said Saturday that they planned to reassess security in the wake of the fatal shootings of two police officers in the U.S. Capitol. But the overwhelming sentiment from President Clinton down through the congressional leadership was to keep the majestic, white, domed home of Congress accessible as "the People's House."

Speaker Newt Gingrich, briefly overcome with emotion during a radio address Saturday morning, called the Capitol the "keystone of freedom." He insisted that "no terrorist, no deranged person, no act of violence will block us from preserving our freedom and from keeping this building open."

In Arkansas, where he was campaigning for a Senate candidate, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the majority leader, echoed the sentiment. But Lott also said that he would press to move ahead with a design that had been proposed earlier that would create an underground visitors' center on the East Front plaza of the Capitol.

Not only would it serve as an orientation point for tourists, but it would also involve initial screening of tourists, by officers and metal detectors, farther away from the Capitol building. The plan has long been stalled over its cost, about $121 million.

For years, and especially after the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City federal buildings, lawmakers have debated how to balance security with public access to the Capitol complex, which draws up to 23,000 visitors a day.

After an explosive device blew up in a hallway outside the Senate chamber in November 1983, lawmakers decided to put up thick concrete planters outside the building as a first line of defense against attack.

But Congress has rejected many other security proposals, refusing to close off the Capitol plaza or to erect a wrought-iron fence around the Capitol's 127-acre grounds like the one that encircles the White House.

In 1995, in response to security concerns raised by the Oklahoma City bombing, the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed to traffic. The street has since become a playground for in-line skaters and roller hockey players.

Clinton Saturday asked that Congress not be barricaded. "All around the world, that majestic marble building is the symbol of our democracy and the embodiment of our nation," he said in his radio address. "We must keep it a place where people can freely and proudly walk the halls of their government."

In April, Congress approved $20 million for an overall security plan for the Capitol complex and grounds.

A far more elaborate plan to create the subterranean visitors' center has been on the drawing boards since 1991. But it has always faltered because of cost.

The design calls for tourists to enter the Capitol from a block away and to descend to a 446,000-square-foot underground visitors' center where theaters would show films about Congress.

Christina Martin, a spokeswoman for Gingrich, said he supports the plan. Laura Nichols, a spokeswoman for Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., the House minority leader, said Gephardt had discussed the proposed visitors' center with Gingrich during a recent joint trip to Israel and that Gingrich had told him he preferred to raise private funds to finance the building of the center.

In the hours after Friday's gun battle in the Capitol, many lawmakers simply insisted that the nation's law-making chambers remain accessible. "We do not want to make the People's House a fortress," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's House delegate.

With the latest shootings as a reminder, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., recalled being on the House floor 44 years ago as a 16-year-old page when four men seeking independence for Puerto Rico fired shots from a public gallery, wounding five Congressmen.

Yet he said Congress should not seek to barricade itself.

"You can never have 100 percent security," Kanjorski, who has served on a House task force that looked at proposed security restrictions, said. "And when all was said and done, we would have been encased in glass."