Washington (AP): Despite years of criticism, the Interior Departrment has failed to come up with a comprehensive plan for cleaning up and managing Indian trust funds, congressional auditors said Tuesday.

"The bottom line here is, the systems are horrible," said Linda Calbom, director of civil audits for the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, a division of the Department of the Interior, is responsible for 2,000 tribal accounts totaling $2 billion and 300,000 accounts totaling $450 million held by Indians.

An audit completed this year by the Arthur Anderson accounting firm said the Indian affairs bureau couldn't account for $2.4 billion in transactions involving tribal funds.

No attempt was made to reconcile the individual accounts because of cost, and a class-action lawsuit was filed against the government Monday by some of the account holders. The money comes from mineral royalties and other income on Indian-owned land.

The Interior Department failed to have adequate staffing and procedures in place for handling the accounts by the time the outside audit was completed, Ms. Calhoun said.

"The actions that have been taken have been piecmeal," she said. "We need to do a comprehensive overhaul."

She said that the Indian affairs agency doesn't have basic information it needs to to manage the accounts, including a database of leases, and that the agency doesn't follow through to make sure that the local agency offices follow proper accounting procedures.

Paul Homan, a special trustee appointed last year to oversee the Indian affairs agency's management of the funds, acknowledged that the accounting system was inadequate, but he said he was implementing a nine-point plan to clean it up.

President Clinton has requested a $20 million increase for Homan's office in 1997 to improve the accounting system.

"Until these reforms are funded, we won't be able to make meaningful inroads," Homan said.