KENNEBUNKPORT — Health Secretary Louis Sullivan, the only black in President Bush’s Cabinet, journeyed to Bush’s home Friday for talks aimed at averting a veto of a major civil rights bill.

Sullivan and Constance Newman, director of the Office of Personnel Management, met with Bush, White House chief of staff John Sununu and counsel C. Boyden Gray to discuss the job discrimination bill that passed the House and Senate in the last month.

Reporters were not allowed onto Bush’s Walker’s Point compound to question Sullivan or the other participants in the meeting.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater reiterated Bush’s threat to veto the legislation unless it is changed in a House-Senate conference. The Bush administration has said the bill would force employers to resort to hiring quotas for minorities in order to avoid job discrimination suits.

Sununu has spearheaded repeated efforts to negotiate a compromise with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and civil rights groups backing the Democratic-crafted measure, which would reverse a string of five Supreme Court rulings in 1989 that narrowed protection against job bias.