U.S. Options Limited on Chechnya

President Clinton said Wednesday that punishing Russia for its war in the separatist republic of Chechnya--as several GOP presidential candidates have urged--is not in U.S. interests. Nor, he said, will economic pressures resolve the crisis.

“The people of Chechnya should not be punished for what the rebels did,” the president said. The militants have been blamed for terrorist bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities.

Clinton added that the guerrillas “don’t represent the established government of Chechnya. They don’t represent the majority of the people there. And the strategy, it seems to me, is more likely to hurt ordinary citizens than the legitimate targets of the wrath of the Russian government.”

Clinton spoke as Moscow’s deadline neared for the beleaguered residents of the Chechen capital, Grozny, to leave the city. On Monday, Russian warplanes dropped leaflets on the capital warning the residents to flee by Saturday or face death in a massive bombing campaign.

Asked whether he’ll contact Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin before the deadline, Clinton suggested that his options are limited, saying, “I haven’t decided what else I can do.”

At the same time, he indicated sympathy for the Kremlin’s efforts to counter the insurgency.

“I have never said they weren’t right to want to do something to the Chechen rebels,” he said. “But I don’t think the strategy will work and, therefore, it will be expensive, costly and politically damaging internally.”

Speaking at a news conference dominated by foreign policy issues, the president also defended the agreement that would bring China into the World Trade Organization as “plainly in America’s interest.”

He said the agreement would protect the U.S. market from below-cost dumping of Chinese products and give Chinese consumers increased access to a wide range of American industries and agriculture.

The move is facing stiff opposition from organized labor, which fears that China’s low labor standards will threaten American jobs by keeping production costs so low that U.S. companies cannot compete.

The session was held in a State Department auditorium where President Kennedy had generally conducted his news conferences. The White House East Room, the conventional site for Clinton news conferences, is crowded with Christmas decorations.

Clinton sidestepped an opportunity to plunge into the controversy in South Florida over whether Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old Cuban boy rescued off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving Day, should be returned to his father in Cuba or allowed to remain with other relatives in the United States. The boy’s mother drowned while she, Elian and others were trying to reach Florida by boat.

The decision about the boy’s future, Clinton said, should be based on what is best for him, a decision determined by courts.

“I don’t think that politics or threats should have anything to do with it,” the president said.

Clinton also touched on the issue of gun violence. With the Department of Housing and Urban Development leaning toward joining a class-action lawsuit against gun manufacturers, Clinton said the purpose of such a course was not “to bankrupt any companies” but to make housing projects safer.

Andrew Cuomo, the department’s secretary, said in a telephone conference call with reporters that “we want an amicable resolution” of the existing 28 lawsuits against gun manufacturers. “We do not want to go to court.”

Cuomo said entry of the federal government into the issue “could actually consolidate those discussions toward settlement.”

At one point, Clinton was asked to nominate a “man of the century.” He chose Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“In this century, our greatest peril was in the Depression and World War II,” Clinton said. “He led us not only through those things and laid the building blocks for a better society with things like Social Security and unemployment insurance . . . but he also looked to the future, endorsing the United Nations,” among other international institutions.

Times staff writer Robert Jackson contributed to this report.