IN PRIVATE TALK, CLINTON CRITICIZES LAWS IMPOSING SANCTIONS ON OTHER NATIONS

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton on Monday criticized laws that
automatically impose sanctions on countries for behavior that Americans
find unacceptable. He said such legislation put pressure on the executive
branch to "fudge," or overlook, violations so that it would not have to
carry out the sanctions.

Clinton made his unusually frank remarks during an appearance before a
group of about 60 evangelical Christian leaders at the White House. They
were meeting with Sandy Berger, the national security adviser, in the
Roosevelt Room.

Specifically, Clinton asked the group to withdraw its support for pending
legislation that aims to reduce religious persecution overseas by imposing
trade and aid sanctions on repressive regimes.

Last week the House International Relations Committee approved, by 31 to 5,
a bill that would impose export and aid sanctions on countries that endorse
or permit violent attacks on religious believers. Among other provisions,
the sanctions would ban imports from such countries, prohibit loans by
multilateral institutions and make it easier for victims of religious
persecution overseas to qualify for asylum or refugee status.

Clinton made clear just how difficult it is for his administration to
produce honest analyses about a country's behavior when Congress passes
laws that require him to impose sanctions the moment a country violates
what Congress defines as good behavior in a variety of areas. These include
human rights, drug cooperation and efforts to stop the spread of nuclear
weapons.

Clinton singled out punitive legislation against Russia, Iran and Cuba as
examples of congressional foreign policy initiatives that box him in.

"What always happens if you have automatic sanctions legislation is it puts
enormous pressure on whoever is in the executive branch to fudge an
evaluation of the facts of what is going on," Clinton said. "And that's not
what you want. What you want is to leave the president some flexibility,
including the ability to impose sanctions, some flexibility with a range of
appropriate reactions."

At another point, he repeated his charge, saying that automatic sanctions
"creates an enormous amount of pressure in the bowels of the bureaucracy to
fudge the finding."

Clinton did not say that the administration had "fudged" facts to avoid
imposing sanctions.

But the Clinton administration, like its predecessors, has been criticized
for ignoring or excusing obvious violations of U.S. sanctions laws to
justify continuing to do business with certain countries.

Earlier this year, for example, the administration certified that Mexico,
America's second-largest trading partner, was fully cooperating in
anti-drug efforts despite evidence to the contrary that could have required
economic sanctions.

Some lawmakers and experts in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons have
criticized the administration for not imposing sanctions on China for its
sale of germ warfare equipment to Iran and continued nuclear cooperation
with Iran and Pakistan.

American lawmakers have threatened to impose economic sanctions on Russian
enterprises or institutions that aid Iran's missile program if Russia does
not fulfill its pledges to block the assistance, a move the administration
has strongly opposed.

In addition, the administration has been cautious in declaring some foreign
companies traffickers in formerly American-held property in Cuba, which
would automatically impose sanctions against the companies' operations in
the United States and their executives' ability to travel here.

As for Iran, the administration has avoided a decision about whether to
impose sanctions against countries or companies that invest heavily in
Iran's oil sector, despite legislation requiring the United States to do so.

Clinton's remarks provided a rare opportunity to observe him in a private
setting in which he did not expect reporters to be present.

The meeting was not listed on his public schedule, and he was told only
later that a reporter had been invited to attend.

During the meeting, Don Argue, president of the National Association of
Evangelicals, told Clinton, "These are praying people," and asked how the
group's members should pray for him.

Clinton asked that they should never say a prayer for him that they don't
say for his family as well.

Then, he added, "I'll tell you what the prayer I say every night is: 'To be
made an instrument of God's peace, to have the words in my mouth and the
meditations in my heart and to be on God's side.' That's about as good as I
can do here."

Clinton also shared a story about his daughter, Chelsea, a freshman at
Stanford University. He told the group that she often logs on to the
Internet in the evening and calls him to ask him about news that will be in
the newspapers the next day.

"She knows I work late," Clinton said. "So some night at a quarter to one
or something, the phone rings. It's Chelsea."

Clinton quoted Chelsea as asking him, "'So what's the explanation for this
event in the newspaper?" I say, 'What are you talking about?"'

In his remarks, Clinton also unabashedly boasted that the religious freedom
that Americans enjoy should be the model for countries that persecute their
people for their religious beliefs.

"The only answer for any of these countries is to basically have a system
that America has," Clinton said. "I've always tried to be a little bit
careful about telling anybody that we know best about everything."

But, he added, in this case, "we know best."

Still, Clinton waxed philosophical about the need to understand other
countries' "historical nightmares" before judging them too harshly.

"It's also important when you deal with a country to know what its historic
bad dreams are," he said.

America's bad dream goes back to the Civil War, he said. Russia's goes back
to invasions by Napoleon and Hitler, and China's goes back to internal
disintegration.

In trying to explain to the Russians why the eastward expansion of NATO was
not a threat, for example, Clinton explained the challenge of overcoming
Russia's historical nightmares. "You know that NATO would never invade
Russia and it's not rational from our point of view," he said. "But then
America was never invaded by Hitler or Napoleon."

Clinton also described President Jiang Zemin of China as a leader who
understands the concerns of the United States and "knows a lot about
Christianity" in China. "I think he understands this issue and I think that
if we just keep pushing along, I think that he will be more likely than not
to advance it," Clinton said.

He added that he personally spent "a lot of time" coaching Jiang during his
trip to Washington last year on how to deal with the news media.

He told the group, "I said, 'You've got to learn how to smile when they hit
you right between the eyes.'

"I said, 'That's the way we do it over here."'

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company