ACCESSION NUMBER:00000
FILE ID:96081501.POL
DATE:08/15/96
TITLE:15-08-96  REPUBLICANS CHARGE CLINTON UNDERMINES U.S. CREDIBILITY ABROAD

TEXT:
(Baker, Kirkpatrick assail president at convention) (610)
By Ralph Dannheisser
USIA Staff Correspondent

San Diego, California -- Republicans put the focus on foreign policy
at their presidential nominating convention August 14, charging that
President Clinton is an inept leader who has squandered opportunities
inherited from his Republican predecessors.

The indictment of Clinton's approach to problems from Bosnia and
Somalia and Ireland to Syria and North Korea was outlined for a prime
time television audience by George Bush's secretary of state, James
Baker, and Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane
Kirkpatrick.

Their slashing attack came as part of a tightly-packed and polished
television presentation that concluded with the formal nominations of
former senator Robert Dole as the Republican presidential candidate to
oppose Clinton, and former housing and urban development secretary
Jack Kemp as his vice presidential running mate.

Baker charged that Clinton has undermined U.S. credibility with allies
and adversaries alike in four years marked by "drift, not direction"
and "rhetoric, not resolve" -- most particularly by "making empty
threats of military action" in both Bosnia and Somalia.

"My friends, a president of the United States should never, never,
never threaten the use of force unless he is damn well prepared to
back it up by action. If you're not going to pull the trigger, don't
point the gun," Baker declared.

And Baker charged that Clinton had allowed America's military
superiority to decay. "We need to begin building an anti-ballistic
missile system now. America must have the means and the will to defend
itself and its allies," he said.

The former secretary of state scored Clinton as well for not pushing
for expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, charging he
"would rather defer to Moscow than exercise American leadership."

"Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic deserve NATO membership, and
they deserve it now," Baker said.

In Asia, he added, Clinton demonstrated to China that "his word was
meaningless" by first enunciating, then swiftly abandoning, a hardline
policy against that nation based on its human rights record. And when
the president "elected to appease the outlaw regime in North Korea,"
he continued, "all Asians learned that he was weak."

Baker complained that Clinton administration officials had "made over
25 trips to Damascus to pay court to Syria's dictator, and came up
with exactly zero." And the president's White House invitation to
Gerry Adams, head of the political wing of the Irish Republican Army,
brought U.S. relations with Great Britain to the worst level in over
200 years, he said.

Kirkpatrick was, if anything, even harsher in her assessment of
Clinton's foreign policy.

She charged that administration miscalculations had led to the death
of American troops in Somalia and in the recent bombing of a U.S.
military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. "Again and
again...(administration officials) underestimated the danger our
forces would face and failed to provide adequate support," she said.

Kirkpatrick won cheers from her convention audience when she
complained that Clinton had "put American troops under United Nations
command and under United Nations rules of engagement" in hazardous
situations in Somalia, Macedonia and Haiti.

Like Baker, Kirkpatrick accused Clinton of defaulting on vital
military preparedness. "Most serious of all, the president opposes the
development and deployment of a national missile defense that can
protect...the United States itself against attack by an
intercontinental ballistic missile," she said.

And like Baker, she contrasted Clinton with Dole, who she predicted
would be "a reliable and prudent ally, a wise and careful president, a
strong and honorable leader."
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