Washington ? House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstate a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.

However, the closed-door GOP meeting made one ethics change that could make it easier for one party to block a House ethics committee investigation of a congressman.

The provision would require a majority vote of the evenly divided committee to proceed with an investigation. The GOP voted to scrap the current system, which allowed an investigation to begin automatically if the two top committee leaders took no action on a complaint after 45 days.

The proposals go before the full House today. The rules changes include a decision to give new authority to the committee that oversees homeland security issues, a step that the Sept. 11 Commission had strongly advocated.

The surprise dual decisions on the indictment rule and the discipline standards were engineered by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay — who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule so DeLay could retain his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged three of the Texas Republican’s associates.

Republicans gave no indication before the meeting that the indictment rule would be changed. Even more surprising was DeLay’s decision to make the proposal himself.

Jonathan Grella, a spokes-man for DeLay, said that DeLay still believed it was legitimate to allow a leader to retain his post while under indictment.

But Grella said that by reinstating the rule that he step aside, DeLay was “denying the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that could undermine our agenda needs to be nipped in the bud.”

Hastert made the proposal to retain the current standards of conduct. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said that a change in standards of conduct “would have been the right thing to do but it was becoming a distraction.”

The House ethics panel last year concluded that DeLay created the appearance that political donors from Kansas energy company Westar were given special access to him.

DeLay also was admonished for his office’s contact with federal aviation officials, seeking their intervention in a Texas political dispute.