Clinton Talks of Banning Some Ammunition

President Clinton said Wednesday that he might support an outright ban on types of ammunition that are manufactured solely to injure and kill humans.

Clinton said that the proposal by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) for steep new taxes on ammunition to help pay for health reform “deserves serious consideration.” But he said that, if bullets are manufactured entirely to have a “devastating effect on someone’s body,” he wonders “whether we ought not to just get rid of the bullets.”

At an East Room press conference, Clinton also hailed Vice President Al Gore’s performance in Tuesday night’s debate with Ross Perot over the North American Free Trade Agreement, and predicted that Congress will approve the pact. The agreement, he said, “comes at a defining moment for our nation.”

On other subjects, Clinton:

* Said that he has asked the Justice Department to review the sentence of Jonathan Jay Pollard, now serving a life sentence for espionage.

* Offered new statements of support for his foreign policy team and denied suggestions that Deputy Secretary of State Clifton Wharton, who this week announced his resignation from the post, was “scapegoated” for the shortcomings of his superiors.

* Said that he is delighted at signs of progress in talks between Jordan and Israel but insisted that leaders of the two countries do not intend to sign a treaty in Washington Friday.

Moynihan, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had proposed raising federal taxes from 11% to 50% on most types of handgun bullets, while imposing a 10,000% levy on two particularly lethal types. Clinton already supports legislation that would impose a five-day waiting period on handgun sales and advocates a ban on assault weapons.

But his comments on gun control always have been carefully hedged, and he has acknowledged the prerogatives of gun enthusiasts.

Clinton’s words raised the possibility of conflict over the health bill with the independent-minded Moynihan. Last week, as the finance chairman made his first specific recommendations on the health reform plan, he said that he “couldn’t imagine” moving the health bill from his committee without the ammunition tax.

Clinton used the news conference on the day after the debate between Gore and Perot to keep the public spotlight on the trade pact and the House vote next week, which he said “comes at a defining moment for our nation.”

“The contrast we saw last night was clear,” Clinton said. “Mr. Perot warned members of the House of Representatives that they would face awful retaliation if they voted their conscience on NAFTA.

“The vice president urged the members of the House to vote for hope against fear, to vote for the proposition that Americans can compete and win in the global economy,” the President said in a statement that opened the session.

A poll conducted for USA Today and CNN, which broadcast the debate, found that 57% favored the pact and 36% opposed it--an apparent surge of support. Before the televised program, which attracted 16% of prime-time television viewers according to Nielsen Media Research, the margin had been 34% supporting the agreement and 38% opposed.

Clinton had said on Sunday that he was about 30 votes short of the 218 needed in the House to send the trade pact legislation to the Senate, where the President’s allies are believed to have the votes to prevail. Since then, both sides in the fight have claimed that they have signed up support from the shrinking pool of undecided House members.

“It’s changing every day, but we’re getting a lot closer,” the President said. “I honestly believe we’re going to win it now and that’s not just political puff. I think we’ll make it. I’ll be surprised if we don’t win now.”

Clinton held out an olive branch to organized labor, which he had criticized Sunday for what he called the “roughshod, muscle-bound tactics” of unions in the campaign to defeat the trade pact. He said that he had sent a note to Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, and said: “I hope my comments Sunday morning didn’t ruin his Sunday afternoon.”

Clinton’s anger had been prompted by reports that the unions were threatening that House members who voted for the trade agreement would face opposition in their next election campaigns. He voiced the same complaint Wednesday, although in moderate language.

“I don’t think a congressman who has been a friend of the labor movement for 20 years should be told that he or she will get an opponent in the next election or never get any more help” solely because of their position on one issue, Clinton said. “I think that’s bad and it’s not conducive to good government.”

AFL-CIO Secretary Thomas R. Donahue said Wednesday that “we’re not threatening anybody. I reject the word ‘threat.’ ” But he acknowledged that “a half-dozen unions or more” are telling members of Congress that, if they “vote to send jobs out of the country,” the unions’ support won’t be forthcoming.

The trade agreement, which the House is scheduled to vote on Wednesday, would eliminate tariffs, quotas and other barriers to free trade among the United States, Mexico and Canada over a 15-year period beginning Jan. 1, 1994. Opposition is fed by concerns that it would draw investment and jobs to Mexico, where wages are roughly one-seventh to one-tenth those in the United States.

Clinton said that both sides in the fight “need to be very careful not to make extreme claims.” But, he said, “on balance this is a huge deal for America.”

The vote could lead to an economic rebound in the United States, he said, followed by expansion of the trade zone to include all of Latin America.

It also could boost prospects for a long-sought redesign of the global trading system under the proposed General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, he said, and could ease the nation’s drug and immigration problems. Advocates of the agreement contend that improvements in the Mexican economy would curtail the flow of job-seeking immigrants across American borders and give Mexicans involved in the drug trade legitimate alternative ways to earn a living.

On the Pollard case, Clinton acknowledged that he had received a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin asking him to reduce Pollard’s sentence to 10 years. He said that he will not make a decision until he has received the Justice Department report.

Pollard, a former U.S. naval analyst, gave the Israelis satellite readouts on military troop deployments in Arab countries.

Clinton, offering a slightly warmer appraisal of his foreign policy advisers than he did Sunday in a “Meet the Press” television interview, said that they deserve “high marks for dealing with the central large strategic issues of this time.”

He also said that Wharton “did a good job” at the State Department, although U.S. officials have said he was forced out amid complaints about his performance.

He praised Congress for its work on the pending crime bill and said that the so-called Brady bill, which would require the five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, “has a real shot” after 12 years of consideration. The House approved its version of the legislation later Wednesday.

* VOTES STILL IN DOUBT: The debate had no visible effect on the lawmakers who remain uncommitted on NAFTA. A40

* RELATED STORIES, GRAPHIC: A3, A37, A39, D1