Cuomo Again Rebuffs Efforts to Pin Down Presidential Plans

New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who for the last seven years has been the Democrats’ top undeclared candidate for President, refused again Sunday to be pinned down on whether he will run or even when he will decide.

“I’m not agonizing. I’m not delaying,” Cuomo said. “Nor am I struggling over the decision. I’m struggling over the facts. Once I get all of the facts, I’ll make the decision . . . in less than three hours.”

Cuomo did not say when he would get all the facts, but he nonetheless sounded like a candidate Sunday as he sparred with reporters on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

He also lashed out at President Bush for failing to deal with a “sick” economy and chided his fellow Democrats for offering only vague proposals. But when pressed, he declined to be specific about his own program and whether he would cut “middle-class entitlements” or raise taxes to reduce the budget deficit.

In a sharp exchange with columnist George Will, Cuomo denied that he suggested last year that Bush consider giving concessions to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein so as to avoid war in the Persian Gulf.

On Nov. 19, 1990, as U.S. forces were being built up in the Gulf, Cuomo told a Los Angeles audience that Bush should “try to negotiate our way out” of a full-scale war.

“You could negotiate something that gets them out of Kuwait for the most part, leaves them maybe a little bit on the water, leaves them a little bit of the oil,” he said in comments reported in The Times. Cuomo explained that Saddam would need a face-saving gesture from the United States for him to pull out of Kuwait, but in an interview the following day, he denied that he was offering “a blueprint for a settlement.”

On Sunday, he was asked about Operation Desert Storm in view of the fact that he had “suggested early on that perhaps the way to deal with Saddam Hussein after the invasion was to give him a few islands.”

“No, I never said that,” Cuomo replied.