A housing official under Mayor Giuliani pleaded guilty yesterday to using city funds to finance vacations and a bachelor party and having child pornography.

In an unusual court proceeding, Russell Harding appeared in U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s courtroom on a television monitor and entered the plea from a prison facility in Butler, N.C.

Harding, 40, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to embezzle, mail and wire fraud, and possession of child pornography after he was accused of spending at least $400,000 in public funds on himself and friends – for a car, vacations to Hong Kong and Canada, magazine subscriptions, and other items.

The federal indictment had accused him of having a child pornography movie and 10 child pornography images on his computer.

The plea deal recommended that he be sentenced to between four and five years in prison and be fined between $10,000 and $100,000.

Harding, the former head of the Housing Development Corp., admitted that from 1998 to 2002 he used housing credit cards to pay for personal expenses.

“I did this to obtain money or property for my personal benefit or the benefit of others,” he said.

He also admitted having computer disks with images of child pornography from Belgium.

The judge began asking him about each of the allegations in the indictment, including $2,000 spent on a vacation to Vancouver, $4,900 on a personal trip to Hong Kong, $3,740 on a vacation to Portland, Ore., and $1,500 on a bachelor party.

From 1998 to 2002, Harding headed the HDC under Mr. Giuliani. Harding’s father, former longtime state Liberal Party boss Raymond Harding, is a close friend of Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani, in a statement through his spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, said: “It appears the government has reached a just result.”