Wilson Prepares for 1988 With Divergent Foreign, Social Views

Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson is hoping his conservative foreign policy positions will ensure that he has no strong challenge from the right in the 1988 Republican primary. And he hopes his more liberal social views will help him reach moderates of both parties in the general election as he seeks a second term.

Wilson showed that profile to reporters Monday, and provided possible ammunition for Democrats who already are saying that he has a fuzzy image after nearly five years in the Senate.

In a breakfast interview with reporters, Wilson made it clear that, on the one hand, he will vigorously defend the Reagan Administration’s increasingly controversial record on military and foreign policy.

At the same time, Wilson, who for years has been pro-choice on abortion, has endorsed the idea of providing condoms to teen-agers in an effort to fight AIDS--a position that puts him at odds with the President and with many California Republicans.

When Wilson was asked if he planned to distance himself from the Administration’s Iran- contra scandal, he reaffirmed his support for aiding the Nicaraguan rebels, or contras, and spent most of his time blasting the Congress for trying to prevent aid with the Boland Amendment.

“I don’t think the privatization of foreign policy is a good idea,” Wilson said, in a reference to revelations in congressional hearings on covert aid to the contras. “But what do you think of a Congress . . . that says ‘Yes, we will help the freedom fighters of Afghanistan’ but doesn’t do the same thing when the Marxist oppressor is a couple of hours from their doorstep?

“If (American officials) have broken the law (in the Iran-contra affair) they obviously have to be dealt with. But the more important issue is the wisdom of the policy. The Boland Amendment never has made sense and is probably unconstitutional. I’d like to see it tested.”

Wilson was referring to the law passed by Congress in 1983 to prevent U.S. aid to guerrillas for the purpose of ousting the Nicaraguan government.

It has been changed to permit some aid, but Wilson has consistently supported U.S. efforts to aid the contras. That puts him at odds with the majority of the California public, who--even before the Iran-contra scandal broke--were opposed to such aid, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll.

On arms control, even though the Reagan Administration has not reached an accord with the Soviets in seven years, Wilson said Monday he thinks the Administration “has a very good record” and he will be glad to defend it in 1988.

Wilson is also a staunch defender of the Strategic Defense Initiative and took issue Monday with scientists who say that, contrary to statements by the President, SDI would not provide a leakproof shield against Soviet missiles.

“Those who are actually working in the field come up with a different answer,” Wilson said. “You are not talking about a perfect, leakproof defense. That is not required in order for SDI to become a tremendously effective defense, so effective as to make almost irrational a Soviet first strike.

“What we have now is no defense. We depend entirely on a deterrent, one that is not tremendously convincing.”

A Los Angeles Times Poll found that Californians are less supportive of SDI than voters in the nation as a whole, but still support some commitment to it by 46% to 28%, with 26% saying they don’t know.

Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, who hopes to be the Democratic nominee to face Wilson next year, has made it clear he would make defense spending by the Reagan Administration a major issue.

On social policy, Wilson’s pro-choice position on abortion has caused him some problems among California conservatives. On Monday, he also made it clear that he favors more sex education and the dispensing of condoms as a means of preventing AIDS. Wilson has pushed the Administration to do a better job of coordinating AIDS research and prevention efforts.

“I am for dispensing information and don’t have any illusion we will be able to restrain sexual contact on the part of a lot of kids unless they are constrained by their parents,” Wilson said.

Would he hand out condoms to the teen-agers?

“I would rather see them available to them than not,” Wilson replied.