In a blistering attack on the Republican-controlled Congress for trying to shape U.S. foreign policy, President Clinton said Tuesday that he will veto legislation that slashes foreign aid spending, dismantles much of the government’s international affairs bureaucracy and requires significant policy changes.

Talking to reporters just minutes after the House started debate on a GOP-backed bill that requires sharp changes in policy toward Russia, North Korea, China and other countries, Clinton said the legislation constitutes “the most isolationist proposals to come before the United States Congress in the last 50 years.”

The House bill, designated the American Overseas Interests Act, would trim $2.8 billion from a $21.6-billion foreign affairs budget that Secretary of State Warren Christopher said already is at “rock bottom.” It would abolish the separate agencies managing foreign aid, arms control and overseas information activities, merging them with the State Department.

The measure also would impose restrictions on the Clinton Administration’s conduct of foreign relations, in effect requiring the President to get tough with North Korea, Russia and Cuba and forcing him to extend diplomatic recognition to Tibet, an act likely to enrage China.


The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the International Relations Committee, is scheduled for a vote--and almost certain passage--Thursday.

Similar legislation is taking shape in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee headed by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). It is expected to reach the Senate floor within the next few weeks.

“Taken together, these constraints represent nothing less than a frontal assault on the authority of the President to conduct the foreign policy of the United States, and on our nation’s ability to respond rapidly and effectively to threats to our security,” Clinton said.

He said the bill “would compromise our efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, impose conditions that could derail our support for democratic reform in Russia and restrict the President’s ability to prevent illegal immigration.”


The bill would require the Administration to renegotiate an agreement with North Korea that offers the hard-line Pyongyang regime two modern light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for a freeze on its nuclear weapons programs.

Even under those conditions, which Republican lawmakers want to harden, North Korea has balked at accepting reactors built in rival South Korea and has threatened to restart a reactor that produces large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium.

The measure also would ban foreign aid to any country engaging in a variety of activities with a “terrorist state,” language that seems to be intended to ban aid to Russia as punishment for its pending sale of nuclear technology to Iran. The bill also would prohibit the U.S. government from sending would-be Cuban refugees back home.

It would also grant political asylum to refugees who fear that they would be subject to forced abortion or sterilization at home, a measure aimed at China’s strict population-control policies.


Clinton offered to negotiate with Republican lawmakers to rewrite the bill in a way that would make it acceptable to him.

But he said that if the legislation reaches his desk in its present form, “I will veto it.”

Gilman said that the budget cuts are required to help reduce the federal deficit. He said the measure would eliminate 23 high-level federal jobs by abolishing the Agency for International Development, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the U.S. Information Agency, transferring their functions to the State Department.

Clinton scoffed at GOP claims that budget considerations make the cuts necessary.


“The price of conducting our foreign policy is, after all, not very high,” he said. “Today it’s slightly more than 1% of the budget.”

Out of Clinton’s $1.6-trillion U.S. budget, the Administration asked for $21.6 billion for foreign aid, State Department operations, maintenance of embassies abroad and all other diplomatic activities.

Administration officials said the cuts of slightly more than 10% contained in the House bill would fall hardest on items such as aid to impoverished countries in Africa because more expensive items, like the $3-billion annual aid package for Israel, have been exempted from the reductions.

But Clinton made it clear that he is most concerned about restrictions on his conduct of foreign affairs. He said the measure sets a precedent for congressional micro-management of foreign policy, which would hamper future Presidents.


“While I hope it doesn’t happen any time soon, someday there will be a Republican President here again and this is about the presidency,” Clinton said. “The presidency cannot be hamstrung.”