Gore, on Campaign Visit, Backs Policy on Kosovo

Vice President Al Gore arrived in Los Angeles on Monday for two days of campaigning in California, but he quickly and repeatedly assumed the mantle of a tough-talking advocate for the Clinton administration’s policies in Kosovo.

Even before landing here at midday, the vice president placed a call from Air Force 2 to the family of Andrew A. Ramirez, one of three soldiers held captive in Serbia, to offer his prayers as well as official assurances.

“We’re going to bring them home safely,” Gore said later.

The vice president also held a private, emotional meeting at a relief agency in West Los Angeles with about two dozen ethnic Albanians, including recent refugees.

Aides said that while Gore enunciated the administration’s policies, he mostly listened to horror stories told by the immigrants, including one man whose elderly mother just died while fleeing Kosovo.

And in a series of press interviews, Gore strongly condemned Slobodan Milosevic in no uncertain terms, warning that unless the Yugoslav president changed his ways “we will continue to escalate the destruction of his dictatorship.”

At a later appearance at Hamilton High School in Los Angeles to promote education reform in California, Gore preceded his scheduled remarks on reducing class size with further comments on Kosovo, telling hundreds of students and teachers that Milosevic “needs to understand that he’s going to pay an ever-increasing price for his crimes against humanity.”

Gore also reviewed the latest details of the mounting humanitarian relief effort underway by NATO and U.S. troops, which includes the temporary relocation of tens of thousands of Kosovars. Then the vice president declared unequivocally that these refugees “have a right to go back to their homes . . . and we’re going to give them an escort.”

Gore declined to discuss details of his talks with the Ramirez family, saying: “They don’t want to call too much attention to themselves.”

He told reporters, however, that Washington has clearly informed Milosevic that the West will hold him and his forces “directly and personally responsible for the safety and well-being and safe return” of Ramirez and his fellow POWs.

Saying that the refugee situation has reached “almost biblical proportions,” Gore said he found it “unimaginable [that] even the last communist dictator in Europe would be so cruel and yield to such evil impulses.”

He also warned the Serbs against invading Montenegro, as some analysts fear. “He will attempt that at his peril,” Gore said.

During a session with a small group of reporters, Gore’s comments suggested that the West may have underestimated Milosevic.

“It’s hard to imagine how this dictator, Milosevic, can live with himself, because his service to a cause is so evil and cruel and so complete that it is impossible to understand such cruelty,” Gore said.

Gore’s 55th trip to California as vice president had not been planned with Kosovo in mind. It had been designed to give him a chance to not only bring more federal education dollars to California but to practice some New Hampshire-style “retail politicking,” in which he would greet potential voters one-on-one by dropping unannounced into some commercial business, perhaps a diner.

The war this week further intruded into the unfolding campaign 2000 in another way, when Sen. John S. McCain (R-Ariz.) indefinitely postponed his scheduled announcement of his candidacy for president today because of the crisis.

But Gore, who also attended two fund-raisers in Beverly Hills on Monday night and has one scheduled tonight in San Jose, made no apologies for campaigning this week.

He made it clear that promoting the administration’s Kosovo policies would now be an integral part of his duties.

“I will continue to spread the message wherever I go,” Gore said.

Also on Monday in Los Angeles, Gore beamed as Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) announced his endorsement of Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination. Becerra called Gore “the right person at the right time for the job.”

At Hamilton High, Gore announced that Washington has granted California a waiver to use $129 million in the coming school year to help reduce class size in 10th-grade math and language arts classes.

Accompanied by his wife, Tipper, the vice president today has public events scheduled in Merced and San Jose before departing for appearances in Iowa, site of the first presidential caucuses in 2000.