Bush Will Not Aid Inner Cities, Carter Says : Poverty: Despite L.A. riots, urban centers will languish, says the ex-President. He blames GOP administrations for widening gap between rich and poor.

Former President Jimmy Carter on Monday predicted that the Bush Administration would provide no meaningful long-term help for the inner cities of America, despite the Los Angeles riots, and charged that White House policies of the 1980s--including “dramatic, drastic” budget cuts--widened the gap between rich and poor.

“I figured either he’d blame Congress or blame Great Society programs or blame the last Democratic President,” Carter said, referring to remarks by Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater that liberal Democratic welfare programs were a cause of the mayhem.

“The last thing the Bush Administration wants to do is take responsibility for anything that goes wrong,” Carter said. “And I would bet you that when the furor over the L. A. riots dies away, there won’t be any action at all taken by the White House or Congress” that significantly reverses the downward trend in urban America of the last 12 years.

Carter, who lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan in 1980, made his comments during an interview in which he said that easing poverty in American cities had become an important, personal goal. The former President, 67, spoke at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel where he is scheduled to address the American Booksellers Assn. today. Carter has a book coming out next year about his 1962 campaign for the Georgia Senate.

Since leaving the White House, Carter has concentrated much of his energy in other countries, including efforts to combat hunger and disease, resolve conflicts between countries and safeguard human rights. Last September, he decided to focus new attention on poverty closer to home. The result was the Atlanta Project, an initiative that he hopes will set a national example for tackling the chronic ills of the inner city.

“I began to realize that the worst discrimination on Earth is the rich and powerful against the poor and weak,” he said. “This is not only the case in war-torn and hunger-ridden countries in Africa and Asia, but also in our own communities.”

The Atlanta Project, as envisioned by Carter, will try to marshal the energies of a cross-section of citizens and institutions to help the needy on issues ranging from health care to education. In addition, it will try to establish greater coordination among government agencies that have been criticized for overwhelming their impoverished clients with a jumble of requirements. Carter recently asked Bush to issue a directive for federal agencies to cooperate with his initiative in such areas as reducing red tape.

As President, Carter angered traditional liberal interest groups with what many saw as a more conservative approach to spending and by his aloofness toward the Washington Establishment. In the interview, however, he expressed concern for federal cutbacks that came during the Reagan presidency in such areas as housing for the poor, preventive health care and other programs that help the needy.

Such cuts, combined with Reagan-era tax policies, have widened the gap between the haves and have-nots, he said. Carter added that the blame for today’s urban woes goes beyond the White House and extends to Congress, state and local governments and other institutions.

Recent data from the U. S. Census shows that income disparities between the wealthy and poor broadened during the 1980s, in Southern California and much of the nation.