Clinton, Citing Richard Jewell, Cautions Press

On a day meant to highlight the United States’ role in the Pacific, the flap over campaign financing reached across the ocean to Australia, where President Clinton cautioned reporters to remember the example of Richard Jewell, a symbol of false accusation in Atlanta’s Olympic Park bombing.

“We ought to just get the facts out and they should be reported,” Clinton said in an apparent reference to John Huang, a former official with the Democratic Party and Commerce Department who has been near the center of questions about Democratic Party contributions from overseas.

“One of the things I would urge you to do--remembering what happened to Mr. Jewell in Atlanta--remembering what has happened to so many of the accusations over the last four years made against me that turned out to be totally baseless,” Clinton said.

Last month, the FBI cleared Jewell as a suspect in the Atlanta bombing after he endured months of surveillance and public suspicion.

The president has denied his administration’s foreign policies were affected by contributions from people associated with an Indonesian banking conglomerate.

The Democratic National Committee has returned nearly $770,000 in illegal or questionable contributions in recent weeks. Most of the funds were solicited by Huang, including $250,000 from a South Korean company obtained while he worked as a fund-raiser for the DNC.

Eleven congressional committees are looking into Huang’s activities while he worked at the Commerce Department and later for the DNC. The Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission and the Commerce inspector general also are probing various aspects of Huang’s activities.

Clinton made his remarks shortly after meeting today with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Clinton paid tribute to the two nations’ friendship and spoke of the need to “engage” China as a partner rather than an adversary in the coming years.

The president arrived in Sydney on Tuesday to kick off a postelection journey around the Pacific Rim in which he is juggling the roles of commander-in-chief and first tourist. Clinton has planned a game of golf with Greg Norman, the Australian star, a boat tour of the Great Barrier Reef and a dinner cruise in Sydney’s harbor, among other activities, before he leaves the country later this week.

“I’ve had so much fun in the last day I’m amazed that only three American presidents have come here,” Clinton said after a 20-minute meeting with Howard.

For his part, Howard declared: “The president of the United States is always welcome in Australia.” The visit is Clinton’s first. George Bush and Lyndon Johnson also made state visits to Australia.

Today, Clinton laid a wreath at the tomb of Australia’s unknown soldier, lunched inside the Federal Parliament and helped plant a dogwood tree on the property of Gov. Gen. Sir William Deane, who is the personal representative of the queen.

In a joint news conference with the prime minister, Clinton said, “I think China has to be a big priority for all of us,” adding that the United States has no strategy “to contain” or isolate China, but rather is seeking to engage the Chinese. “I intend to spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort on that.”

Clinton has scheduled a meeting with Chinese President Zemin Jiang in Manila on Sunday, where he will attend a conference of Pacific nations.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Quin Qichen had some tough remarks before going into a morning of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. While he spoke of opportunities in expanding U.S. ties with China, he called Taiwan “the core issue in the relationship,” warning that if it were mishandled it would upset efforts to improve relations between the two countries.

Christopher is on a three-day visit to China as part of an effort to consolidate gains made in Sino-U.S. ties over recent months and to pave the way for a series of high-level contacts, beginning with Sunday’s meeting between Clinton and Jiang.

During Clinton’s joint news conference with Howard in Sydney today, the U.S. president also said that information technology was the area that he most hoped for trade liberalization in Asia. He predicted an amicable resolution to a U.S.-Australian flap over exports of automotive upholstery subsidized by Canberra.

But for all the emphasis on weighty concerns, both global and domestic, it was another issue altogether that captured the limelight for a brief moment today--an Australian newspaper report, quickly denied by the White House, that a golf pro was included in Clinton’s traveling entourage.

“To my knowledge that is not so,” the president quipped before his meeting with the prime minister. “I should have,” he added, because “I’m gonna need all the help I can have.”

Clinton’s Australian golf partner, Norman, is nicknamed “the Shark” and is considered one of the top golfers in the world. The golf game is set for Thursday.

Howard has actively sought to strengthen Australian ties with the United States, an effort that seems to be yielding results. In July, the two nations agreed to tighten their security relationship and conduct more joint military exercises, to extend the U.S. lease of a spy base at Pine Gap until 2008, and also to work together on a relay station that is part of America’s early warning system against missile attack.

U.S. officials now refer to Australia as an “anchor ally,” and the White House has appreciated Australia’s efforts on behalf of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, restrictions on chemical weapons, environmental protection and other matters.

Later in the day, Clinton emphasized such issues in a speech to a joint session of Parliament.

“We need not choose between Europe and Asia. In a global economy, America must look to the East as well as to the West. . . . Our security demands it.”

Clinton said that in the coming years, the United States “is and will remain a Pacific power.”

“We are inexorably linked to the promise of the Asia Pacific region.”

The Australia visit is part of a Pacific tour that will include stops in the Philippines and Thailand before Clinton returns to Washington the day before Thanksgiving.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall from Beijing contributed to this story.