RIOT AFTERMATH: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS : Buchanan, on Koreatown Visit, Expresses His Shock

Republican presidential contender Patrick J. Buchanan visited Koreatown on Monday and said he was shocked by the destruction, pain and anguish in the wake of the rioting.

But the conservative former television commentator called the riots “a police problem, pure and simple,” and said he was unwilling to enter into the public policy debate that has begun over possible ways, if any, to improve the long-term prospects of the desperately poor people in South-Central Los Angeles where much of the destruction occurred.

“Why all this guilt?” Buchanan hotly asked a reporter, brushing off questions about possible governmental solutions.

Buchanan, even though he has been mathematically eliminated in the Republican presidential nomination race by President Bush, still plans to campaign here for GOP delegates in California’s June 2 primary election. His mission is twofold: He wants to keep conservative pressure on Bush and continue to build a political base that he can use should he decide to run again in 1996.

During the day he toured some burned-out businesses in Koreatown and then did a series of media interviews from his hotel room in Century City.

Along the way, Buchanan said he supports disaster relief loans that will help businesses in Koreatown and other stricken areas rebuild, but reiterated his opposition to any efforts to create more social programs.

Echoing Bush, he called 1960s anti-poverty programs a failure.

“The riot should have been stopped at the earliest possible moment with the maximum use of force,” he told a reporter. “To suggest that this calls for . . . a Model Cities program or a Head Start program is ridiculous.”

Buchanan said Bush’s initial response to the rioting was “weak and ineffectual,” but then said the President did the right thing when he “sent the troops in.” He also said Bush’s push for a federal investigation of the Los Angeles police officers acquitted in the Rodney G. King beating trial sounded to him as though the President was being “pressured by the mob.”

While saying he did not condone the beating of King at the hands of the officers, Buchanan said the policemen “have been prosecuted, tried and exonerated, and to get up and say we are going to try them again sounds as though (Bush is saying,) ‘We are going to do it until we convict them, so don’t loot.’ ”