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WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., announced a deal yesterday to repeal controversial measures tacked onto the law creating the new Homeland Security Department, including an amendment granting vaccine-makers liability protection.

The provisions were inserted into the legislation at the 11th hour last fall. Critics had denounced the maneuver, saying the provisions were unrelated to the main bill and were inserted to benefit special interests.

The agreement to undo the provisions was a departure from the norm on Capitol Hill.

Frequently, special-interest favors are slipped into bills at the end of a congressional session. Rarely, if ever, are they yanked off the books within weeks of enactment.

But that is what the Republican-led Congress is about to do under the pact that Frist and his House counterparts struck with a trio of GOP centrists.

Legislation to scrap the vaccine-liability language will move in the Senate next week, Frist said.

It then is expected to win speedy approval from the House. The legislation will be attached to a major government spending bill that President Bush is expected to sign.

The deal honored a pledge made last year by Frist's predecessor, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi. But it still was a major concession by the new majority leader in his first week on the job.

The agreement could help Frist bank important good will from GOP centrists as he seeks their much-needed support for Bush's legislative agenda.

''I appreciate (Frist's) efforts to address these unresolved issues from the homeland security bill,'' said one of the three centrists, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I.

Lawmakers and aides marveled at the deal, which was a setback for some influential Washington lobbies. ''It's not a normal occurrence,'' said Dave Lemmon, an aide to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., a critic of the vaccine provision.

During the final debates last year on the homeland security bill, Frist had argued forcefully for the language granting liability protection to makers of mercury-based vaccine preservatives.

As sponsor of a separate vaccine bill that contained almost identical language, Frist said such measures were needed to boost an industry essential for public health. His argument was influential: He is the only physician in the Senate and one of his party's leaders on medical issues.

At the time, Frist voted against a Democratic amendment to strike the vaccine-liability language.

But the issue did not go away. Critics accused congressional Republicans of tilting the legal system in favor of drug companies at the expense of autistic children. Hundreds of parents have alleged in lawsuits that the vaccine preservative thimerosal caused autism in their children. Eli Lilly & Co., the preservative's chief maker, and other defendants in the suits deny the charge.

Frist's name also had surfaced in connection with the legislation because he headed Senate Republicans' political fund-raising arm.

Critics pointed to the amount of money Eli Lilly and the pharmaceutical industry had donated to Republicans.

Eli Lilly was one of the most generous campaign contributors from the industry in the 2002 elections, giving about $1.4 million to federal candidates and parties, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Three-quarters went to Republicans.

The entire pharmaceutical and health products industry was the largest corporate contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the political arm of Senate Republicans that was headed by Frist.

Frist's rise to majority leader, after the agreement to renegotiate had been made, may have added to the pressure on lawmakers to repeal the provision. Democrats had said the negotiations would be a test of Frist's independence from the pharmaceutical industry.

Under the provision added to the homeland security bill, plaintiffs in the thimerosal litigation are forced to seek compensation out of court, through a special victims fund. Under the proposal Frist agreed to, the provision would be repealed and the legal cases could proceed without interruption.

However, Frist secured a commitment from Chafee and his two GOP allies, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, for the Senate to revisit the issue later in the year. He told reporters he wanted ''a more comprehensive approach'' to vaccine-related reforms. Asked if he had changed his mind about the need for certain liability protections for the vaccine industry, he said, ''Absolutely not.''

Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly said in a statement that the company was disappointed. ''However, Lilly agrees that the process by which this legislation was enacted was not desirable,'' spokesman Ed Sagebiel said.