Lugar Sees Clinton Retreat in Global Leadership

Bidding to establish himself as the chief Republican spokesman on foreign policy, Sen. Richard G. Lugar berated the Clinton Administration on Thursday for what he characterized as a retreat from world leadership that will undermine global peace.

In a scathing attack on the Administration for backing away from its plan for Bosnia because it lacked allied support, the Indiana lawmaker said President Clinton has abandoned “American leadership and decisiveness in favor of ‘multilateralism’ and the desire to pursue consensus.”

“The President has given the impression of lacking a policy of his own, seeking instead to gauge what will sell,” Lugar said. “How many potential aggressors . . . will now feel that they can defy the international community with impunity--that the West is all bark and no bite?”

Clinton decided last month to urge the United Nations to relax the arms embargo against the Muslim-led Bosnian government and to conduct allied bombing raids on the Serbian artillery positions besieging Bosnian cities. Although he continues to refer to the proposal as his “preferred option,” he shelved it in the face of opposition from Russia and Western Europe.

Lugar conceded that there is no strong public support for U.S. military intervention in Bosnia but he said that Clinton could have won such backing if he had proposed strong action and “asked the American people to rise to the occasion.” He said that Congress was ready to support Clinton’s original plan “but the call never came.”

The speech to the Overseas Writers Club seemed to mark a new Republican offensive against Clinton’s approach to foreign policy. It came only days after Brent Scowcroft, who was President George Bush’s national security adviser, and former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger launched a new international research organization.

Scowcroft said the group hopes to demonstrate that the United States must provide world leadership and “we don’t feel we have the luxury of inaction . . . until we get our domestic house in order.”