The White House legal counsel said Tuesday that he had averted a confrontation with House Republicans by agreeing to permit them to have limited access to 28 presidential documents on the government’s ill-fated attempts in 1993 dislodge the Branch Davidians from their compound near Waco, Texas.

Abner Mikva, the White House lawyer, said in an interview that he would allow lawmakers to read but not copy the documents, which include President Clinton’s handwritten notes, early speech drafts and memos to Clinton from his aides. Two memos to the president are recent notes from Mikva.

Congressional investigators had said they wanted unrestricted access to the papers and rejected the initial White House offer to describe the contents of the papers to certain lawmakers, with a commitment to provide a fuller explanation, if specific documents could be shown to be relevant to the inquiry.