Clinton Tries to Defuse Ohio Protest

President Clinton and key aides scrambled Thursday to contain fallout from the rowdy protests at a public meeting in Ohio over U.S. threats to bomb Iraq, amid fragile optimism that a peaceful outcome to the standoff with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may still be in reach.

As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan departed for Baghdad in an eleventh-hour bid to persuade Hussein to allow unrestricted weapons inspections, Clinton declared the trip “a critical opportunity to achieve the outcome that all of us would prefer--a peaceful and principled end to this crisis.”

Clinton also said he had conferred Thursday by telephone with President Jacques Chirac of France, which has pressed harder than any other Western nation for a diplomatic compromise.

But even as he held out hopes for Annan’s mission, Clinton repeated his demand that, under any diplomatic solution, Hussein must agree to “full, free, unfettered access” by U.N. inspectors to any Iraqi site suspected of illegally harboring facilities to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

“If diplomacy fails, we must be and we are prepared to act,” Clinton said. “The choice is Saddam Hussein’s. We hope he will accept the mandate of the world community. . . . If not, he must bear the responsibility for the consequences.”

Citing the Iraq crisis, Clinton scrubbed long-planned trips by Vice President Al Gore and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen to South Africa. “In the coming days, I want my full national security team on hand to take part in our deliberations and decisions on this vitally important issue,” Clinton said in a statement from the White House lawn.

Clinton also played down the significance of the loud dissent to his Iraqi policy that surfaced at Wednesday’s “town meeting” at Ohio State University. Cohen, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger had hoped to use the forum to build public support for a possible attack on Iraq but instead were heckled, jeered and shouted down by a vocal minority in the audience objecting to military action.

The spectacle--televised globally by the Cable News Network to about 200 million households--seemed to catch the forum’s participants by surprise. But Clinton on Thursday characterized it as simply “a good old-fashioned American debate.”

Albright, for her part, on Thursday again met with students, in sessions that were more tightly controlled and proved vastly smoother than the raucous Ohio exchanges. Speaking at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Albright dismissed those who disrupted the Ohio gathering as “a few dozen hecklers.” Most Americans, she said, support the administration strategy to undertake military action if necessary to reduce Hussein’s ability to build weapons of mass destruction.

Still, the scenes of dissent Wednesday constituted a public relations disaster for an administration that prides itself on polished presentation. Iraqi state television quickly seized upon footage of the event for propaganda purposes, airing it repeatedly throughout the day on Thursday.

Although Congress is on a weeklong recess, there were signs that what happened at the forum could make it harder for Clinton to win legislative endorsement for his strategy. Referring to efforts that preceded the 1991 Persian Gulf War, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff noted that then-President Bush “spent months demonizing Saddam . . . so that ordinary Americans were comfortable going in [militarily]. The [Clinton] administration has waited a long time to make its case and now will have to live with it.”

Unlike some of the protesters in Ohio, many Senate and House Republicans have been attacking Clinton’s strategy on Iraq because, in their view, the contemplated military action should aim to topple Hussein. For these congressional critics, the real message of Wednesday’s town meeting came in the emotional question from the veteran who asked the panel if they were “willing to send troops in and finish this job or are we going to do it half-assed.”

Republicans were quick to highlight this sentiment. “We should clearly, unequivocally state that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power is our goal, and we haven’t made that case to the American people,” declared Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana.

In an interview Thursday, Berger admitted that one benefit of the Ohio meeting was “seeing the resonance of what that vet said.”

“I feel we probably do have to address this more fully,” he said.

He and other senior administration officials argue that Hussein’s ouster, while a highly popular idea, would require a large-scale military land campaign, possibly lasting several months, would cost large numbers of U.S. casualties and would have no guarantee of success. Further, they insist, Hussein’s capture is not essential to meet the primary goal of diminishing Iraq’s ability to build weapons of mass destruction and threaten neighboring countries.

Public opinion surveys suggested slipping support for the White House policy toward Iraq. An ABC News poll, conducted Wednesday night, found that 64% of the public approved of Clinton’s handling of Iraq, down from 70% the previous night. Earlier in the week, a Gallup poll for CNN and USA Today had found that public support for an armed U.S. assault had fallen below 50%.

One administration official, asked if the rowdy town meeting signaled that the White House had yet to finish the task of making its case for military action, responded: “Sure.”

But like others, the official sought to put the best face on the event. “Taking military action is a serious step. There are serious questions that get asked, that need to be answered,” the official said. “If you get past the theatrics of people who were making a lot of noise, there were serious questions being asked and being answered.”

Reaction to the Ohio meeting seemed to energize domestic opponents of an attack on Iraq. Peace Action, a grass-roots pacifist group, labeled the Ohio session a “fiasco” for the White House and claimed the reaction “illustrates the growing opposition to military strikes.”

Clinton himself crossed paths with dissenters on a visit to Baltimore. As the presidential motorcade pulled into a hotel, about 30 protesters were gathered across the street and behind a fence. “Bombs kill children--we say no,” chanted the demonstrators, who held banners protesting the threatened bombing and the continued economic sanctions on Iraq.

Times staff writer Marc Lacey in Baltimore contributed to this report.