CLINTON PUSHES TOBACCO SETTLEMENT

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) -- President Clinton pressed his case for
tobacco-settlement legislation Tuesday, then set off for a Democratic
fund-raising dinner at the home of a lawyer friend who represents smokers.

Clinton renewed his call on Congress to act soon on a tobacco settlement
that would cost the industry $368 billion in exchange for legal limits on
cigarette advertising and marketing.

``There is no need to wait,'' the president said. ``There is no excuse for
waiting.''

In a speech focused mainly on child care, Clinton said part of the tobacco
settlement money could be used to finance his plan to make child care safer
and more accessible for needy families. He announced that he was ordering
federal agencies to ensure proper background checks on child care workers
and to ensure that 100 percent of federal child care centers be
independently accredited by the year 2000.

After his appearance at Housatonic Community Technical College in downtown
Bridgeport, Clinton was attending two fund-raisers with the Democratic
National Committee's business council. They were expected to raise a
combined $850,000.

At a fund-raising luncheon at the 125-year-old Inn at National Hall in
nearby Westport, Conn., Clinton said the Democratic Party must stay focused
on ways to spread the benefit of this decade's economic boom to a wider
circle of Americans.

``There are still neighborhoods and people who haven't participated in it,''
he said.

Later, the president flew to Cincinnati for a $10,000-per-couple dinner at
the home of Stanley Chesley, a trial lawyer who is among a group of
attorneys representing individual smokers. Last week, Chesley testified
before Congress in favor of a settlement.

Chesley did not mention the tobacco issue Tuesday in introducing Clinton,
but in brief remarks to the group he mocked the news media's attention to
the event. He gave Clinton a souvenir T-shirt and said, ``To the media: the
total cost was less than $12.''

On Monday, Public Citizen's Congress Watch, which opposes giving the tobacco
industry protection from future lawsuits as part of a settlement, criticized
Clinton's attendance at the Cincinnati dinner as a conflict of interest.

Among the sticking points in the tobacco debate in Congress are the issues
of tobacco company protection from lawsuits and the distribution of fees to
lawyers like Chesley.

In a brief encounter with reporters in Bridgeport on Tuesday, Clinton
ignored a reporter who shouted a question about the propriety of appearing
at the Cincinnati dinner.

Barry Toiv, a White House spokesman who was traveling with the president,
said there was no conflict of interest. ``We're not playing an active role''
in the debate over how to calculate fees for the lawyers involved in the
case, Toiv said.

``It's not a problem,'' Toiv said of criticism from consumer advocate Ralph
Nader and others. He said Chesley was a longtime supporter of Clinton and
had hosted numerous other fund-raising events for the Demcratic National
Committee.

Toiv said Clinton did not favor giving the tobacco industry protection from
lawsuits but would accept it if that issue threatened to block a final
settlement.

Evoking images of teen smokers puffing their way to early deaths, Clinton
said time was beginning to run out on Congress to enact legislation that
could save lives by deterring young people from starting smoking. He said
that every day in America 3,000 young people start smoking and that 1,000 of
them would die early because of it.

``Think about it. Every single day,'' Clinton said. ``The time to act is
now.''

On his arrival in Bridgeport, Clinton spent about 15 minutes mingling with a
dozen boys and girls at a child care center. He quizzed them, playfully, on
their building-block projects, paintings, drawings and computer games.

``Great car!'' he exclaimed to a girl in pigtails who had erected a 6-inch
high stack of blocks atop a plastic car.

In his speech later, Clinton said child care is one of his top policy
concerns. ``What I see here today is what I believe every child in America
needs,'' Clinton said. ``There is a crying unmet need ... all over the
country for the kind of high-quality child care that you offer here.''