Terms were not immediately disclosed, but Gov. Ben Cayetano said it's a contract the state can afford amid a tight budget year; otherwise, he would not have agreed to it.

Details of the contract will be presented to the UH Professional Assembly's board at an 8:30 a.m. meeting tomorrow. The meeting will now focus on members' ratification of a new contract, rather than to set a strike date.

If approved by the board, UHPA representatives will follow with a 1 p.m. meeting tomorrow to inform faculty about terms of the settlement.

Today's breakthrough was announced at a 2:30 p.m. news conference attended by Cayetano, UHPA Executive Director J.N. Musto, UH President Kenneth Mortimer and UHPA board president Alexander Malahoff, among others.

It came after a daylong 5 1/2-hour meeting in the governor's chamber.

"I think it is a good tentative agreement for the needs of the faculty," said Musto.

"We feel confident the faculty will accept the contract," said Malahoff.

Cayetano, sporting an "I support UHPA" button, said: "I want to urge all the university students to attend classes. There will be no strike. I think we can be pretty confident of that. And I look for a better relationship - a growing relationship - with the faculty union."

When the day started, it had been do or die for state and union negotiators hoping to avert a University of Hawaii faculty strike when the spring semester begins Monday.

At 9:17 a.m. today, members of the UH Professional Assembly negotiating team arrived at the governor's office for talks after a one-day break. UHPA Executive Director J.N. Musto led the group, and when asked about negotiations, said: "No more Mr. Nice Guy."

At 10:14 a.m., the bargaining team moved into the governor's private offices, where they remained at mid-morning.

Cayetano and the UH administration said significant progress was made during an all-night bargaining session that ended at 4:30 a.m. yesterday.

Faculty at the 10 university and community college campuses can have legally striked beginning Monday.

The union on Jan. 3 gave the state the required 10 days' notice of its intention to call a systemwide strike after 80 percent of its voting membership authorized the action.

The faculty has been without a contract since June 1995, with the state and union at impasse over pay, intellectual property rights, proposed changes in faculty workload, promotion and tenure procedures, travel and per diem, leaves without pay and parking.

Mortimer said in a message published in today's UH faculty-staff newsletter that the state has accepted the union's proposal of no salary increase for the 1995-1996 fiscal years and 4 percent raises for the 1997-1998 fiscal years.

The state also accepted the union's proposal to continue current university policy regarding ownership and revenues from copyrights and patents, Mortimer said.

Said Cayetano: "It's been the state doing the accepting and the major issues that divided us are now resolved and there's no reason for a strike, and there's every reason for us to settle this thing."

The state is still negotiating contracts with most of its 13 public workers unions, including the Hawaii State Teachers Association.

Cayetano has said pay raises for all the bargaining units could drain the state treasury.

But yesterday he said UHPA's proposal is "something that we could handle."

"If all the other unions made that wage proposal, we would accept it in a minute," he said.

Star-Bulletin staffer Jennifer Hong contributed to this report.