Clinton Foreign Policy ‘Illusory,’ Dole Charges

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — In a blistering critique that used this week’s inconclusive Mideast summit as its point of departure, Bob Dole on Thursday accused President Clinton of engaging in “a series of photo opportunities, treaty signings, staged handshakes and even military theatrics” to camouflage a “rudderless and illusory” foreign policy record.

The GOP presidential nominee charged that after nearly four years with Clinton at the helm, “our friends no longer respect us and our enemies no longer fear us.”

Dole’s criticism of Clinton on the international front was echoed by running mate Jack Kemp during a campaign stop in Connecticut, signaling the sharpening of GOP rhetoric in the days before this Sunday’s debate between the two presidential candidates.

Dole’s attack, delivered in a speech to a business group in this east Tennessee community, was by far his harshest assessment of Clinton’s handling of foreign affairs--an area where the former Senate majority leader generally has supported the president, even when he did not agree with the administration’s actions.

Clinton, for his part, took the high road on the campaign trail Thursday, touting his economic record at a rally in Buffalo and leaving it to White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry to respond to Dole’s remarks.

McCurry cited the end of the Bosnian war, an accord on nuclear weapons with North Korea and peace efforts that have given Israel what he called its “most secure position in decades” as examples of the administration’s accomplishments in foreign policy. He also sought to turn the tables on Dole, chiding the Republican’s foreign policy team as “nattering naysayers of gloom.”

McCurry said Dole “has got advisors who used to be somebody in the 1980s who long for the days of the Cold War when life was a lot simpler because there was a common enemy.”

Dole pointed to Clinton’s hastily arranged two-day summit of Mideast leaders as evidence of a “string of failures dressed up for television as victories--a foreign policy of neglect, posturing, concessions and false triumphs.”

Kemp, campaigning in Bridgeport, Conn., picked up on that theme, saying that diplomacy should not be carried out “in a fishbowl.”

Referring to photographs of Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the White House after their talks ended Wednesday, Kemp said: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that photo ops are replacing true diplomacy in the Middle East. I’m calling on the president today to stop the politics, to stop the photo ops.”

Dole in his speech focused on Clinton’s policies toward Iraq, saying the president had not been tough enough on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. “Remember what President Reagan used to say: ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’ Well Saddam Hussein is,” Dole told his luncheon crowd.

Dole charged that Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kurdish “safe havens” in northern Iraq last month and subsequent execution of scores of opposition leaders would not have occurred had a more forceful president occupied the Oval Office.

“It is hardly surprising that our allies in the region were unwilling to support” the administration’s decision to retaliate against the incursion into Kurdish territory with cruise missile attacks on targets in southern Iraq, Dole said. And he termed those attacks a “feeble response.”

Other developments on the foreign scene for which Dole criticized Clinton were North Korea’s recent submarine infiltration of South Korea, increased terrorist violence between England and Northern Ireland and the return of death squads to Haiti.

As a prelude to his speech, Dole on Thursday morning reviewed foreign policy over an hourlong breakfast in Washington with retired Gen. Colin L. Powell and former Reagan White House Chief of Staff Kenneth M. Duberstein.

Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.