Clinton Calls Haiti Mission a Success, Praises U.S. Troops : Caribbean: Congress backs off imposing deadline on the operation, but declines to give full support. President says Haitians ‘are moving from fear to freedom.’

President Clinton and his top aides declared the U.S. intervention in Haiti a success Thursday, seeking to persuade Congress and the public that the effort is working--and that it is worth continuing.

Both houses of Congress, bowing to the Administration’s arguments, backed away from earlier attempts to impose a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from the nation.

The Senate and House, persuaded by the Pentagon that a deadline could endanger U.S. forces, approved a resolution merely urging the President to pull the troops out as soon as possible.

The House also early today rejected, by an overwhelming 398-27 vote, another measure authorizing the operation until March 1 that would have allowed the President to extend that date indefinitely. Republicans said the Democrat-backed authorization would have been an endorsement of Clinton’s decision to commit troops.

In a day of White House efforts to win public credit for a military action that has gone well, Clinton visited the aircraft carrier Eisenhower in port at Norfolk, Va., and told sailors and aviators: “Thanks to your efforts, the Haitian people are moving from fear to freedom.”

Standing on one of the nuclear-powered ship’s giant hangar decks, the President listed the accomplishments of the mission so far: U.S. forces have disarmed Haitian paramilitaries, removed heavy weapons from the Haitian army, restored electric power to two cities, seized control of the country’s radio and television broadcasting facilities, allowed the Haitian Parliament to reopen and restored the mayor of Port-au-Prince to his office--”in less than three weeks,” Clinton noted.

“You brought a new day to a people who thought they would never get it,” he said. “Your country is proud of you.”

In Washington, other officials reinforced the message in a White House briefing, saying that a planned handoff of the U.S. mission to the United Nations next year is “on track” and praising exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide for his cooperation.

“We have established basic security,” a senior Clinton aide said. “The capacity for organized, centrally controlled resistance is over. The capacity for violence certainly is still present.”

Despite the decision to use U.S. troops to police Haiti’s cities, he added, the Administration is trying to maintain limits on their role.

“The mission of our troops in Haiti is not nation-building,” he said. “Our mission is to assure a transfer of power, create a secure environment . . . and get out.”

Another official repeated the Administration’s strong opposition to a congressionally fixed deadline for the operation, saying it would only encourage Haitian forces that want to stop the United States from restoring Aristide to power.

Officials said Clinton plans a news conference at 11 a.m. PDT today, in part to repeat the message that the operation in Haiti should be recognized as a major foreign policy success.

The Senate backed away from setting a firm deadline when it adopted, by a 91-8 vote, a bipartisan resolution that called only for the troops to be pulled out “as soon as possible.” The House later passed an identical resolution, 258-167.

Relieved that the Haiti operation has gone off without incident, House members who last week were clamoring for an early withdrawal also rejected, by a 225-205 vote, a GOP resolution that would have called for an immediate pullout. They set up another vote in January, when the next Congress convenes, to order a withdrawal within 30 days if it has not already been completed.

Meeting into the early hours, the House rejected the resolution authorizing the troops to remain in Haiti until March 1.

Even if it had passed, that resolution would have been largely symbolic because the Senate’s refusal to embrace a withdrawal date would mean that it would not become law. But that still did not stop lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol from spending the waning hours of the 103rd Congress bitterly debating Clinton’s Haiti policies.

Warning that Clinton should not take comfort from the fact the Senate resolution was bipartisan, Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said Republicans oppose setting a withdrawal date in part because they do not want to imply that they support the occupation until that date.

Although even many Democrats said privately that they share some of Dole’s reservations about “mission creep,” or expansion of the U.S. role in Haiti, the constant, almost vituperative GOP criticism of Clinton prompted Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) to complain that the Republicans seemed to be “disappointed” by the fact that “things have gone so well in Haiti” over the last two weeks.

“Let’s face it. This thing has worked. Not a single American has been killed . . . and we are going to have a democratically elected government restored in Haiti,” Mitchell said, noting that a number of Americans were killed in the invasions of Panama and Grenada that Republicans supported because they were ordered by Republican presidents.

As has generally been the case in his visits to military facilities, Clinton received a polite but not particularly enthusiastic greeting on the Eisenhower, where military personnel had waited nearly two hours on deck for the visit that began about an hour late.

While many applauded loudly as Clinton was introduced, others stood with their hands clasped behind their backs or thrust into the pockets of their dress-white uniforms.

After the speech, much of the crowd left quickly, but hundreds stayed for nearly half an hour to shake hands with Clinton as the sound system rather incongruously boomed out Bob Dylan’s anti-war anthem of the 1960s, “The Times, They Are A-Changin.’ ”

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this report.