Carter’s Foreign Policy Exploits Cause Unease

When the Clinton White House accepted former President Jimmy Carter’s offer to lead a last-ditch mission to Haiti, officials might have expected the kind of help that elder statesmen have provided often in U.S. history--Averell Harriman, for example, faithfully serving the policies of a succession of chief executives for almost half a century.

In fact, recent events have shown that Carter is nothing like Harriman or any other former President or special envoy. Acting as what many in Washington see as a virtual secretary of state, the determined, deeply religious Carter has repeatedly injected his own idealistic views into U.S. policy--sometimes bending and changing official policy in the process.

From Haiti to Cuba to North Korea, critics inside and outside government acknowledge that the peripatetic former President has defused an impressive series of confrontations. Indeed, it was Carter, The Times has learned, and not Clinton Administration officials, who contacted Cuban leader Fidel Castro and won approval for the crucial talks in New York that led to the halt of the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States earlier this month.

In the process, however, Carter has sometimes eclipsed Clinton’s own foreign policy team, publicly criticized Administration policy, sounded an independent--critics say confusing----new voice for U.S. foreign policy and, on occasion, created what officials and outside analysts view as new problems to replace the old ones.

Now even some members of Carter’s own Democratic Party, who applaud the results of his efforts, are expressing concern about the impact of his methods on the sitting President and on the established system for making and carrying out foreign policy.

One Democratic senator said Wednesday that most of his colleagues were “extremely upset” with Carter’s “dismissive contempt” for Clinton and his “even more shocking statement” that he had told Haitian strongman Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras that he was ashamed of U.S. policy toward Haiti.

“Maybe it’s time,” the senator added, “for Carter to hang up his diplomatic hat and retire for good.”

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) accused Carter of hogging the limelight and giving Clinton little credit for the Haiti agreement.

“It reminds me of why he bothered me as President,” snapped Biden, who broke off his on-the-record comments and became apoplectic in denouncing Carter.

Congressional Republicans, while publicly praising Carter for averting a U.S. invasion, also expressed private dismay at his statement to Cedras that he was “ashamed of what my country has done to your country,” referring to the impact of the U.S.-led economic embargo on the health and nutrition of children in Haiti.

Beyond Washington, some scholars and policy specialists see potential problems in the extraordinary role Carter has carved for himself--especially his refusal to be bound by established policy.

“It’s not good for the presidency as an institution to have two people presenting the country’s foreign policy,” said Merle Black, professor of politics at Emory University in Atlanta. “We don’t let other citizens make private deals with foreign governments and have those ratified later by the President. Ordinarily, a President would actively discourage people from doing these things.”

When a special envoy goes outside official policy, as critics say Carter did by publicly treating Haitian officials as legitimate and honorable after Clinton had denounced them as brutal thugs, the resulting agreement “takes on a life of its own,” Black said. “The President is held hostage to his independent envoy. It makes the President look weak. The President is pushed into a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

“It presents a very confusing picture to the American people,” he said, with the public left to wonder in the case of Haiti “who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?”

George Vest, a career diplomat who served as assistant secretary of state in the Carter Administration, said it is particularly difficult when an envoy persists in conducting foreign policy even after the negotiation session is over.

“When the negotiation is over, that’s when the negotiator’s role ought to end,” he said. “The President’s response to an envoy who won’t give up should be: ‘I asked you to do a negotiation and you did it. Thank you. How we carry on is the responsibility of the government.’

“The risk to a President when he picks a bad envoy is that he can agree to things that go far beyond what the President wants. Then the President has to disown the negotiator, which makes the President look stupid,” he said.

Vest noted that playing the narrow role of a traditional diplomat is especially difficult for Carter.

“President Carter is a man who is very sure that he is right. He’s a very morally cocksure man,” Vest said.

Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and--along with Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--a member of the special mission to Haiti, said in an interview: “Clinton, in sending a private citizen, especially a former President, has to recognize he (the envoy) has his own views and there’s nothing that says he can’t express his own views wherever he is.”

But Nunn said Carter “was faithful to the mandate of the President” and that the former chief executive’s “reputation as a humanitarian and a deep believer in peace” gave him stature and credibility with the Haitian leaders.

Preliminary results from a Los Angeles Times national poll conducted Tuesday and Wednesday nights indicate that Carter’s rating has risen noticeably from the last time The Times’ poll asked about him in January, 1993, when Carter had a 54-to-32 favorable-unfavorable rating.

The poll also found that people believe that Carter was greatly influential in getting the Haitian agreement accomplished.

Some State Department officials have opposed using Carter as an emissary, convinced that his repeated public criticisms and penchant for pushing the envelope of his instructions have added to an already widespread perception of disarray in Clinton’s foreign policy apparatus.

And when Carter has played a role, it has not always been made public.

No mention was made at the time, for instance, of Carter’s pivotal role in contacting Castro and winning his approval for a New York meeting on the immigration crisis.

After the meeting was scheduled, the Administration miffed Carter by cutting him out of the negotiations.

White House sources said Vice President Al Gore, acting on Clinton’s instructions, telephoned Carter after the New York meeting was arranged and informed him that his services would no longer be needed because the Administration had opened up its own line of communications with the Castro government.

A State Department official said Carter “has sought to be involved in a number of other highly delicate negotiations like the Middle East talks, and that just isn’t on. A private envoy works in some situations, but not others.”

In the Haiti and North Korean crises, however, Carter maneuvered so that he was the principal negotiator--sending some Clinton foreign policy officials up the wall.

Carter’s missions and the State Department’s reaction to them have created a deep rift between him and current Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who served as Carter’s deputy secretary of state and whom Carter once called “the greatest public servant I’ve ever known.”

Despite Carter’s trashing of Clinton’s policies, the President’s aides insist that Clinton continues to be comfortable with their relationship.

Whether he is or not, Carter shows no sign of slowing down the pace of dealing with foreign crises.

He has announced he intends to continue meeting with leaders considered too unsavory and untrustworthy by Clinton’s foreign policy team.

He conferred with the leaders of North Korea and Haiti, Carter said, because they wanted to have someone who would listen to them and talk to them.

“I’m not excusing the crimes that may have been committed by these men. That’s not the point,” he declared in an interview with The Times. “We opened an avenue of communication. These are the kinds of things we will continue to do in the future.”

Carter said his wife, Rosalynn, worried that he was putting himself in a bad light by dealing with foreign leaders, such as Castro, who have records of oppression.

But Carter said dealing with such leaders “is the essence of what we do at the Carter Center,” his Atlanta institution that houses the Carter library and serves as a foreign policy center.

“We work with the Gen. Aidids, the Yasser Arafats, the Fidel Castros, the Kim Il Sungs and others who are demonized in our country to such an extent that our own President won’t even talk to them,” Carter said. “We have an unfortunate attitude in the State Department that if we disagree with you, we won’t talk to you until you yield to our demands.

“And, almost invariably when I go to a country urging all this acquiescence on these leaders, I find that the dehumanization is either unjustified or partially justified.”

Carter said he is continuing to stay in contact with the leaders of North Korea, Haiti and Cuba, and he hopes to play a key role in resolving problems that exist or may develop with those countries.

Carter’s style of free-lance diplomacy in Haiti was, in many ways, a replay of his mission to North Korea last June.

Then too the former President was asked by the leader of a repressive foreign government, the late Kim Il Sung, to visit his country to try to mediate a dispute with Washington.

Carter traveled with a sort of unofficial authorization, obtaining White House approval before making the journey.

At the time, the United States was moving with its allies toward the imposition of U.N. sanctions against North Korea for its suspected push to develop nuclear weapons.

Carter emerged from his Pyongyang meetings with a promise that North Korea would freeze its nuclear program, then took the Administration by surprise by releasing the news on CNN.

He also announced publicly that the Clinton Administration had decided to drop the move toward sanctions, a claim that U.S. officials immediately denied.

Carter’s negotiating style there bore many of the attributes he later displayed with Haiti:

* A strong portrayal of his achievement. “It was kind of like a miracle,” he said of his negotiations in North Korea. Standing outside the White House, the former President declared that “the crisis is over,” an assertion that the Clinton Administration rejected and that remains questionable.

* Public expressions of sympathy for a dictator and his regime. “I don’t see that they (North Korea) are an outlaw nation,” he told reporters. “People (in North Korea) were very friendly and open.”

* Public disagreements with and criticism of the Clinton Administration. Carter announced that Washington had decided to drop the move for sanctions before it ever had a chance to look at the agreement. He also said he found it “inconceivable” that Clinton had not sent his own representatives to North Korea to try to settle the dispute. And he challenged the thrust of U.S. strategy, saying that “if I had thought the sanctions were a good idea, I never would have gone over there.”

* Denunciation of pressure as a tool of foreign policy. “Pressure on them is counterproductive,” he said.

* Praise of the foreign leader’s wife, apparently as a negotiating technique. Explaining how he persuaded Kim Il Sung to release some remains of Americans from the Korean War, Carter said: “His wife (Kim Jong Ae) broke in and told him he should do it, which I thought was very nice. She is a very attractive lady.”

Just as in Haiti, Clinton Administration officials found themselves presented with a fait accompli : Carter had gotten a deal, and if they criticized the details or the way it had been obtained, they would appear to be opposing the overall settlement.

Times staff writers Doyle McManus, Michael Ross and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this report.