Clinton Undercut at G-7 Summit by GOP Congress : Politics: Need to negotiate issues with Republicans diminishes U.S. presidential stature at meeting.

When the leaders of the world’s richest countries took up the question of Bosnia-Herzegovina over dinner here last week, French President Jacques Chirac seized the floor to make an impassioned appeal for action. British Prime Minister John Major, a telephone to his ear, relayed last-minute details of debate in the U.N. Security Council.

And President Clinton? As the others listened intently, Clinton found himself explaining his problems with a Republican-run Congress--and how that meant he could not promise U.S. financial support for the new rapid-reaction force, which other countries are already backing with pledges of money and troops.

“It was a position we would rather not have been in,” a White House aide said dryly.

If there had been any question, the three-day summit of the Group of Seven leaders that ended Saturday was the moment that Clinton came face to face with a blunt new reality: The Republican ascendancy in Congress has sharply diminished his power in foreign policy as well as domestic affairs.

On the two most critical issues facing the summit--Bosnia and the establishment of international financial safeguards--Clinton was forced to tell the other presidents and prime ministers that he could not be sure how much the United States would be willing to do until he negotiated further with Congress.

U.S. presidents were once the unchallenged leaders at G-7 sessions, but no longer.

“These meetings are much more egalitarian now,” said a senior Canadian official who has participated in several summits. “The world has changed . . . and the way we run the meetings has changed.”

Clinton has seen his primacy eroded by two events: the end of the Cold War, which dissolved much of the glue that held the allies together, and then, more sharply, last November’s congressional election, which put budget-cutting Republicans in charge of the nation’s foreign affairs spending.

GOP leaders such as Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) have said they hope to maintain some of the Cold War tradition of bipartisanship in foreign policy.

But in practice, by opposing any new spending--especially for multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund--they have clipped the President’s wings severely.

Indeed, on the eve of the summit, Dole and Gingrich made public a letter warning that they would join Clinton in backing the rapid-reaction force for Bosnia only if “no additional U.S. financial or military obligations will be incurred.”

The effect was to force a delay in the Security Council vote on the issue--and to undercut the President on his way to Halifax.

Clinton aides insisted that the President was not hobbled by the issue.

“With respect to the debates in the United States over internationalism [and] isolationism, there’s obviously concern among the leaders here,” said Samuel R. Berger, Clinton’s deputy national security adviser. “But . . . the President has a great deal of authority and a great deal of initiative. They understand that.”

And other leaders expressed understanding.

Major said he regretted that Clinton’s “difficulties with the Republican leadership” had held up funding for the rapid-reaction force but praised Clinton for promising to seek a way for the United States to contribute.

Chirac, apparently trying to lend Clinton a hand, denounced Dole and other GOP leaders for proposing to lift the U.N. arms embargo on the former Yugoslav federation, a course he said “would lead to disaster.”

Clinton and his aides were visibly dismayed that much of the media’s attention here focused on the insoluble problem of Bosnia. The President was even overheard complaining to the other leaders about reporters’ questions on the issue.

“They were, you know, sort of parroting the American line, ‘Why don’t we just lift the embargo?’ ” he said in aggrieved tones as television video cameras recorded the first few minutes of the leaders’ dinner on Friday. “I walked them through the whole thing, chapter and verse . . . and they said, ‘Well, it’s not getting any better.’ ”

But even on more congenial issues, Clinton did not collect much visible credit.

He briefed the other leaders enthusiastically on his new plan, unveiled last week, to balance the U.S. federal budget in 10 years. Although they have complained for years about the U.S. budget deficit’s effect on their own economies, none of the other leaders made a public point of praising the President’s move.

U.S. officials said Clinton should get credit for the summit’s most significant action, the decision to set up an emergency financing mechanism at the International Monetary Fund to prevent economic crises, like this year’s crash of the Mexican peso, from threatening the stability of the global economy.

The leader who clearly had the most fun at Halifax was France’s Chirac, who pressed for action on Bosnia, lectured Yeltsin on the need for negotiations in the rebel province of Chechnya and startled the other leaders by saying he wanted to attack currency speculation “the same way we have attacked AIDS.”

“I hope we can do better than that,” Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien reportedly said under his breath.

Unlike Clinton, Chirac came to the summit under a full head of political steam: elected to office only last month, basking in a honeymoon-size 64% approval rating and enjoying a whopping 80% majority of seats in his nation’s Parliament.

White House aides found it difficult to conceal their envy and annoyance at the French president’s confident ebullience.

“He’s got a lot of sizzle now,” one official said of Chirac. “Let’s see how he looks in a couple of years.”