WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans will meet early next month to decide the fate of Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who stepped up his fight yesterday to hold on to his post as the Senate's top leader.

Lott predicted, during a tough interview on a black-oriented cable network last night, that he would survive the assault on his job. He promised to push the interests of racial minorities if he remains in the leadership.

At the meeting Jan. 6, one day before Congress convenes, Republican senators could decide to undo the action they took last month making Lott the majority leader. The decision to meet reflected growing uneasiness among Republicans about Lott's ability to lead after the furor resulting from his recent comments that were seen as endorsing segregation.

Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, who could emerge as the leading candidate to succeed Lott, said he and other Republicans "are actively engaged in deciding what is in the best interest of the Senate as an institution and the country.

Pressure on Lott to step down could intensify in the three weeks leading up to the meeting, as potential successors try to gain the support of at least 25 of their Republican colleagues. It would take a majority of the 51 Republicans to remove Lott and choose a replacement.

Yesterday, Lott took his campaign to keep his leadership job to Black Entertainment Television, a cable network aimed at African-Americans. He appeared for 30 minutes in a question-and-answer session arranged by BET founder Robert L. Johnson, a Mississippi native and one of the nation's leading black entrepreneurs.

During the interview, Lott maintained that his votes in Congress don't accurately reflect all the actions he has taken over the years. Lott, whose voting record has earned him failing grades from civil-rights groups, insisted that he favors affirmative action.

"Absolutely," he said. "Across the board."

He voted in 1991, however, to abolish affirmative action (racial preferences designed to remedy past injustices) in federal hiring. In 1995 and 1996, he supported measures that, if approved, would have barred affirmative action in federal contracts for road construction and other programs.

Lott pointed instead to his hiring of blacks for his Senate office staff and contended that "my actions in trying to directly help individuals" meant more than his votes as a congressman and senator.

During the program, taped yesterday at a studio in Mobile, Ala., the senator described his recent comments about Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as not only insensitive but "repugnant, quite frankly." He acknowledged that he had been part of "immoral leadership in my part of the country" on racial issues and described the Mississippi society of his younger days as "wrong and wicked."

In remarkably blunt comments for a television interviewer, BET's Ed Gordon suggested that Lott was appearing contrite merely "because you find yourself in a tough spot."

At another point, Gordon said that Lott's fond remarks about Thurmond's 1948 pro-segregation presidential candidacy were seen as "code" language to racist whites about "the good old days."

Lott said that to survive the internal challenge to his leadership by fellow Republicans, "I am going to have to make changes, make amends."

He said that if he becomes majority leader, he would be able to "move an agenda that will be helpful to African-Americans and minorities of all kinds."

The senator also said he supported having the Jan. 6 meeting, at which he could be stripped of his leadership position, "because of what I'm going to say and what I'm going to do."

Lott had resisted any reconsideration by his Republican colleagues of their vote to elevate him to majority leader. But his standing has eroded. Publicity over his views on race has undercut efforts by Bush and other Republicans to create a more racially inclusive image of the party for the 21st century.

The White House has pointedly declined to support Lott as he struggles to quell the storm of outrage prompted by his remarks at Thurmond's 100th birthday party - a signal, some Republicans say, that the president would prefer that Lott be replaced.

At the gathering Dec. 5, Lott said the nation would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.

Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that Lott's remarks, for which the senator has repeatedly apologized, were "offensive and repugnant."

The White House press secretary reiterated that Bush "does not think [Lott] needs to resign," but refused to endorse Lott's effort to keep his leadership job.

Lott has been the Senate Republican leader since 1996. But over the weekend, the movement to replace him as majority leader gathered steam.

A longtime rival, Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, said Lott had been "weakened "to the point that he might need to be replaced.

Yesterday, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Conrad Burns of Montana joined two other Republicans - Sens. John W. Warner of Virginia and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - in calling for a meeting to consider ousting Lott.

McCain said: "Senate Republicans must act to prevent the controversy concerning Senator Lott's remarks from creating increasing harsh political divisions among us that will test the public's faith in our sincerity."

The decision to wait until Jan. 6 gives Lott - and his opponents - three weeks to line up support.

It was by no means clear that Lott's critics would be able to replace him, even with backstage support from the White House. One party strategist noted that "Republicans don't do coups very often."

"The big question is, how does the White House affect regime change, and it's probably more clear in Iraq than in the Senate," said an aide to one Republican senator.

The ability of Bush and the White House to influence the outcome of an internal vote in the Senate might be limited, Republicans say. Internal leadership battles are notoriously unpredictable and often revolve around personal relationships among senators and rivalries within various factions inside the Senate.

Several Republicans are likely to emerge as candidates to replace Lott. Among the possibilities: Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will soon take over as the party's second-ranking official, or whip, and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who chairs the Republican caucus in the Senate.

Frist, a Tennessee conservative with close ties to the Bush administration, is another potential candidate. A physician who has been a prominent voice on bioterrorism and other health issues since the Sept. 11 attacks, he is regarded as a future presidential prospect.

Nickles, whose voting record is as conservative as Lott's, has considered and rejected challenges to Lott in the past. Such a contest, he said in 1998, "would probably end one of our political careers."

Lott's future, should he lose his leadership post, is one of the factors his colleagues might have to consider when they meet next month. The senator has reportedly said he would serve out his term, which runs through 2006, if he is toppled from the leadership. But other leaders who have been deposed have quit soon afterward.

If Lott were to resign, Mississippi's governor, Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat, could appoint a Democrat to replace him. That would end the Republican majority in the Senate, which would then divide 50-50 between the parties as it did at the start of Bush's presidency.

Though Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote would keep Republicans in charge, the Republicans would again be vulnerable to losing control to the Democrats if one of their members abandoned the party, as Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont did last year.