Bush Links Clinton to Agricultural Aid Effort for Iraq : Politics: Governor’s aide confirms meeting with ambassador in 1986 and says the goal was to sell some Arkansas rice to Baghdad.

President Bush sought Sunday night to bring Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton into the murky debate over support for Saddam Hussein during the months before Iraq invaded Kuwait, suggesting that the Arkansas governor had met with the Iraqi ambassador to the United States in an effort to smooth the way for agricultural assistance to Baghdad.

The Clinton camp quickly acknowledged that the meeting occurred in 1986, four years before the Persian Gulf War, and that Clinton met with the ambassador, who was visiting Little Rock, in an effort to sell some of Arkansas’ rice crop to Iraq.

After Bush made the allegation, White House officials said that they could provide no information about the meeting, offering no additional details to support his comments. They also refused to speak on the record about the matter.

“The President’s words speak for themselves,” one official said.

Deborah Sale, a Clinton aide traveling with the candidate in Kinston, N.C., described the encounter as a “routine governor-to-foreign-dignitary conversation” and noted that the Iraqi official was in the state on other business.

And Clinton, standing on the tarmac at an airport in Kinston, N.C., Sunday night, dismissed the President’s charges as “desperate and pathetic.”

“He is so desperate that he would equate a few minutes of a courtesy call” with his own Administration’s policy of giving support to Iraq in the years and months preceding the Gulf War, Clinton said. The Administration “will not take responsibility for what he has done.”

The President raised the matter during an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live, “ saying that he believed Clinton had met with Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoun.

“Do you know who wanted to make loans--grain credit loans--and got ahold of Mr. Hamdoun, the Iraq ambassador, on grain credits? . . . Gov. Clinton,” Bush said.

When King asked Bush whether “Gov. Clinton wanted to arrange loans,” Bush replied: “I believe that’s the case. . . . I think he met with him and wanted, you know, was pleased that the U.S. agricultural loans--we were making agricultural loans.”

The issue of whether the United States improperly, or unadvisedly, provided assistance to Iraq in the period between the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990, has been an undercurrent in the presidential campaign.

Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, last week said the Administration’s effort to befriend Hussein was responsible for the Persian Gulf War.

The meeting, according to the Clinton campaign, occurred when Hamdoun was meeting with the Arkansas Rice Council. It took place two years after the Ronald Reagan Administration had normalized relations with Iraq.

Bush’s attack is similar to others made by Republicans against Democratic members of Congress who met with Iraqi officials on behalf of constituents who wanted to sell food crops to Iraq with loans guaranteed by the federal Commodity Credit Corp.

The Democrats have replied that they were simply aiding constituents seeking to sell their produce and that they were not aware of the intelligence available to the Bush Administration about Hussein and his arms buildup.

Democrats, meanwhile, have distributed numerous Administration documents that show the United States licensed the sale of technology that helped Hussein build his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

In the interview, Bush said the initial assistance given to Hussein was aimed at trying to moderate his behavior and to bring him into the community of nations.

“We were trying to bring the guy along,” he said.

“What happened was, they had an illegal diversion of materials that would have helped them build a nuclear capability,” which, the President said, was “substantially” destroyed during the Gulf War.

“But to allege that we were building up his arms or building up his nuclear power knowingly is simply fallacious,” Bush said. He said that “committee after committee” has looked into such allegations.

“I don’t know why these people are so excited,” he added.

Asked whether he was saying he had nothing to apologize for, Bush responded: “That’s what I’m saying, yeah.”

The interview was conducted in the White House and was taped several hours before it aired. Bush has said that he would appear on King’s show once more before the election, when he will take calls from viewers.

Clinton and Gore are scheduled to appear on the program this evening.

Bush also said in the interview that he had been “technically” correct when he said last fall that the economy was not in recession.

He said he was referring to the generally accepted economists’ definition of a recession: two consecutive quarters in which there is a decline in the gross domestic product, the widest measure of economic activity.

“So when I said there isn’t a recession last fall, technically I was right. But I should have done it recognizing that there’s a hell of a lot of people hurting. . . . So I could have handled that better,” he said.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story from Kinston, N.C.