From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: CLINTON - COMMITMENTS, POLICIES & CHALLENGES
Date: Sun,  8 Nov 92 20:40:12 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

CLINTON'S COMMITMENTS - FROM A TO Z
By Peter Honey
(c) 1992, The Baltimore Sun 11/06

	   President-elect Bill Clinton made many commitments to voters en
route to his election Tuesday.
	   Here - from A to Z - are some of the policies Clinton has said
he plans to implement in his administration after he becomes the nation's
42nd chief executive Jan. 20.
	   ABORTION: Promises to sign a Freedom of Choice Act. Would repeal
``gag'' rule barring federally financed clinics from counseling pregnant
women about abortion. Would seek pro-choice nominees for Supreme Court.
	   AGRICULTURE: Would strive to open new markets abroad, especially
Eastern Europe and former Soviet Bloc. Would negotiate to open closed
markets and level competition with countries that subsidize exports. Would
modernize domestic farm programs, expand agricultural research and
development. Cut red tape.
	   AIDS: Wants more funds for research, prevention and treatment.
Would appoint AIDS policy director to cut red tape and implement
recommendations of National Commission on AIDS. Plans to speed up drug
approval process. Seeks to improve cooperation between HIV-affected
communities and federal authorities. Promotes national AIDS education and
prevention. Would forbid health insurers from denying coverage to
HIV-positive applicants. Would lift ban on HIV-positive foreigners
traveling or immigrating to the United States.
	   ARMS CONTROL: Ratify the START treaty and subsequent agreement
of June 1992. Seek a comprehensive test ban treaty. Would maintain ``stable
nuclear deterrent.'' Focus research and development on a limited strategic
missile defense system in accord with the ABM treaty. Supports research on
limited missile defense system against long-range missiles but spurns
massive space-based defense like Brilliant Pebbles. Plans to bolster
International Atomic Energy Agency's capacity to carry out surprise
inspections in member countries. Would use sanctions against countries and
companies spreading dangerous weapons. Demands all nations tighten arms
export laws and strengthen enforcement of nuclear weapons policies. Ensure
agricultural and non-military loans are used as intended and keep key
technology and equipment out of reach of dictators.
	   ARTS: Would continue federal funding of the arts.
	   BUREAUCRACY: Will cut the White House staff by 25 percent. Phase
out 100,000 federal positions through attrition. Will require 3 percent
across-the-board federal administrative savings.
	   CAMPAIGN FINANCE: Place voluntary spending caps on House and
Senate campaigns. Limit political action committee contributions to $1,000
per individual; lower cost of television advertising time.
	   CHILDREN: Fully fund Head Start and other pre-school and
development programs. Increase legal deterrents of domestic violence. Give
federal assistance to schools needing metal detectors and security
personnel to crack down on playground shootings and violence. Establish
school-based clinics and drug education.
	   CHINA: Make China's most-favored nation trade status contingent
on human rights reforms and cutbacks in arms proliferation, plus opening
market to U.S. goods.
	   CIVIL RIGHTS: Supports strong enforcement of 1991 Civil Rights
Act. Opposes racial quotas. Would sign the Violence Against Women Act to
toughen penalties and deter domestic violence. Pledged to sign the ``Motor
Voter Bill'' to ease voter registration. Increase tribal authority in
Native American tribal governments. Supports statehood for Washington, D.C.
	   CRIME: Wants a ``federal police corps'' in which college
graduates could serve as law enforcement officers to repay student loans.
Federal assistance for crime-control. Favors death penalty.
	   DEFENSE: Cut spending by $60 billion, 4 percent less than
President Bush's plan, by end of 1997. Redirect funds to rebuilding
nation's infrastructure and reducing the deficit. Reduce aircraft carrier
task forces from 12 to 10. Build the C-17 transport plane, V-22 Osprey
tilt-rotor aircraft and up to three Seawolf submarines. Reform defense
procurement system.
	   DEFICIT: Expects to more than halve the deficit by 1996, to $141
billion, on the assumption that the economy will improve under Clinton
policies and injection of funds from federal savings.
	   DISABLED: Fully implement and enforce Americans with
Disabilities Act. Support increased funding for special education services.
Improve enforcement of laws that guarantee equal access to high-quality
public education. Seek to integrate disabled children in regular school
activities.
	   DRUGS: Appoint a drug czar. Step up federal assistance for
drug-treatment programs.
	   ECONOMIC STRATEGY: Invest more than $50 billion a year for four
years to spur public and private investment for jobs. Plans to save nearly
$300 billion for investments and deficit reduction by cutting spending and
closing tax loopholes. Would redirect more than $100 billion from defense
cuts over four years to rebuild America and deficit reduction. Would create
an Economic Security Council, similar to National Security Council, to
coordinate international economic policy. Cut entitlement spending by $4.4
billion over the next four years and boost city development through his
coordinated economic plan.
	   EDUCATION: Supports parental choice of schooling, but opposes
using federal funds to include private schools in the choice. Would give
states matching funds for high school and job education. Would fully fund
Head Start. Favors national testing. Allow student loan borrowers to pay
back money through payroll deductions and public service. Institute a
nationwide apprentice system for high school students not planning to
attend college. Expand urban education services.
	   ENERGY: Raise energy-efficiency standards and auto fuel
efficiency to 40 mpg. Promote use of natural gas but oppose drilling in
Arctic Refuge. Discourage nuclear power. Consider a carbon tax to punish
high carbon dioxide emitters and tradable credits to reward companies that
lower emissions.
	   ENVIRONMENT: Toughen penalties for pollution, including jail in
cases of extreme violation. Promote economic incentives, job retraining,
community development instead of weakening Endangered Species Act. Assert
strong U.S. positions on climate change, sustainable development and
species conservation. Follow conservationist approach to land and resource
issues, favoring wildlife and wetland protection. Strengthen environmental
regulation while favoring economic incentives.
	   FAMILIES: Sign the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow up to
12 weeks vacation time for nursing mothers or workers with sick family
members. Support legislation to report deadbeat parents to credit agencies
to restrict their borrowing for personal needs. Use Internal Revenue
Service to collect child support. Make it a felony to cross state lines to
avoid support payments.
	   FOREIGN AID: Increase food aid and raise funding for Food for
Peace. Reform foreign aid system.
	   GUN CONTROL: Sign the Brady Bill to create a waiting period for
purchase of handguns. Seek to ban assault rifles. Favors death penalty.
	   GOVERNMENT SPENDING: Rein in ``pork-barrel'' programs by
reducing special interest subsidies.
	   HEALTH CARE: Promises health coverage for all Americans. But
recipients will have to share costs with uniform payments procedure. Core
benefits package includes inpatient hospital care, prescription drugs and
preventive programs. Would give employers choice of private insurance
scheme or public program. Would establish federal board to set annual
national health care expenditure targets. Would raise medicare-B costs for
those earning $125,000 a year or more. Supports legislation to deny
tax-breaks to drug companies that overcharge. Provide federal support to
HIV-infected people and voluntary, confidential AIDS and HIV testing and
counseling.
	   HOUSING: Encourage home ownership for poor and first-time
buyers. Raise FHA mortgage insurance to 95 percent of average home price.
Give federal support for low-income, long-term housing buyout programs.
Strengthen state and local administration of low-income HOME rental
program. Favors Community Development Block Grants to boost low-income
housing stock. Extend Low Income Housing Tax Credit to spur private
development. Combine housing programs with training, education,
health-care, drug-treatment and crime-prevention programs.
	   IMMIGRATION-FOREIGN POLICY: Seek to eliminate immigrant visa
backlogs that can separate husbands and wives for two years and extended
family members for up to 15 years. Pledges to ensure that temporary worker
programs do not displace native Americans from the work force. Enable
employers to hire workers abroad where labor shortages exist. Stop the
forced repatriation of Haitian refugees and tighten existing embargoes to
restore ``an elected government.''
	   INDUSTRY: Begin a $20 billion a year ``Rebuild America Fund'' to
invest in high-speed transportation, communications, environmental
technology. Create civilian research and development agency to unite
business and universities in technology development. Strive to convert
defense to peacetime industry. Provide tax breaks for companies investing
in research and development.
	   ISRAEL-MIDDLE EAST: Supports current Arab-Israeli peace
negotiations. Shows more sympathy for Israeli position than his
predecessor. Calls Jerusalem undivided capital of Israel.
	   JOBS: Expand job training programs. Require low-income housing
developers to set up in poor neighborhoods and employ local residents.
Wants employers to spend 1.5 percent of payroll for continuing education
and training of all workers.
	   LABOR: Increase minimum wage in line with inflation. Sign
Workplace Fairness Act to ban permanent replacement of striking workers.
Seek repeal of Taft-Hartley Act to level playing field between labor and
management.
	   LINE-ITEM VETO: Ask Congress to give the president the right to
veto parts of bills to ``eliminate'' pork-barrel spending.
	   LOBBYING: Streamline and toughen lobbying disclosure. Wants
special interest groups to register with Office of Government Ethics within
30 days of contacting federal officials. Lobbyists must regularly disclose
contacts and clients. Seeks five-year moratorium on ex-government
appointees lobbying federal agencies after leaving office. Insists former
senior officials pledge never to become registered agents for foreign
governments. Ask Congress to eliminate tax deductions for special interest
lobbying expenses and stop ``disguised'' lobbying by lawyers for foreign
governments and powerful corporations.
	   MILITARY ABROAD: Cut U.S. troop strength in Europe and Asia to
between 75,000 and 100,000 instead of the previous administration's target
of 150,000. Keep U.S. forces in northeast Asia ``as long as North Korea
presents a threat to our South Korean ally.''
	   NATIONAL SECURITY: Institute a five-year plan, reducing military
personnel and spending, shifting focus of conventional forces from East
Bloc to diversified projection of power wherever U.S. national interests
threatened. Ask allies to shoulder more of international defense burden.
Enhance intelligence capabilities.
	   OZONE: Endorses predecessor's commitment to phase out production
of chlorofluorocarbons and other chemicals that erode Earth's stratospheric
ozone layer and heighten risk of skin cancer.
	   POLICE: Seek to put 100,000 new police officers on the beat.
Create National Police Corps and encourage unemployed veterans and active
military officers to join law enforcement.
	   QUALITY OF LIFE: Propose comprehensive strategy to raise
American living standards with ultimate goal of phasing out welfare
dependence.
	   REBUILDING AMERICA: Create Rebuild America Fund with an annual
$20 billion federal investment for four years, leveraged with state, local,
private sector and pension fund contributions. User fees such as toll roads
and solid-waste disposal charges will help guarantee the investments.
	   SMALL BUSINESS: Offer new-enterprise tax credit providing 50
percent tax exclusion for those making long-term investment in new
businesses. Give tax breaks for investment in new plants and productive
equipment needed to compete internationally. Provide affordable health care
to small enterprises. Favors small business conversion grants to help small
defense contractors switch to civilian production. Encourage network of
small business community development banks to help low-income
entrepreneurs.
	   SPACE: Strive for greater international cooperation with
Europeans, Russia and Japan. Continue National Aeronautic and Space
Administration projects aimed at understanding Earth. Involve NASA in more
educational projects. Continue development of space station Freedom and
maintain the space shuttle's central role in the civilian space program.
	   TAXES: Raise taxes on families earning more than $200,000 to pay
for middle class tax cut. Give middle class a choice of tax breaks: either
a tax credit for children or a reduction in tax rate. Favors a 50 percent
exclusion of capital gains from taxation for ``long-term'' investments in
new businesses. Will not grant a tax break for most securities and
investments. End tax breaks for companies that shift plants overseas. Reign
in deductions on executive salaries. Crack down on foreign companies that
manipulate tax laws. Expand Earned Income Tax Credit to guarantee a working
wage to guard reduce the number of ``working poor.'' Increase Earned Income
Tax Credit to make up difference between a family's earnings and poverty
level. Would increase the taxable portion of Social Security payments to
the wealthy.
	   TRADE: Strive to reduce trade barriers by completing GATT talks.
Endorse North American Free Trade Agreement, with reservations, but seek
tougher environmental and labor protections in the NAFTA. Extend ``Super
301'' legislation to prod trading partners into opening their markets to
U.S. goods. Seek to expand development and export of U.S. biotechnology,
super-conducters and computer-integrated manufacturing.
	   URBAN DEVELOPMENT: Seek to boost city development through
national economic strategy, incentives and grants to revitalize urban
economy. Expand education, job training and child care services. Provide
federal subsidies for cities that adopt revitalization programs. Community
Development Block Grants to rebuild roads, bridges, etc. Create network of
community development banks to provide small loans for low-income
entrepreneurs and inner city homeowners. Favors urban enterprise zones with
tax and regulatory incentives for businesses to set up shop in inner
cities; City Assistance Flexibility Program to allow cities to redirect 15
percent of their federal assistance for revitalization strategies.
	   VETERANS: Opposes opening Veterans Affairs hospitals to
non-veterans. Seeks to cut red tape for outpatient services and benefits.
Supports veterans' mental health programs. Gradually scale down military
forces from active duty to National Guard. Provide early retirement
incentives, including prorated pensions. Allow military personnel a
one-year educational paid leave of absence to train for civilian
professions. Convert closed military bases to homeless shelters, with
priority for veterans. Will make resolution of the POW-MIA issue a national
priority, insisting on full accounting before normalizing relations with
Vietnam.
	   WELFARE: Scrap the current welfare system and install one that
will not make welfare ``a way of life''. Provide training, education and
child care to recipients for two years, after which they must take a job in
the private sector or do community service. Expand the earned income-tax
credit for working poor, create savings accounts that make it easier to
save.
	   WOMEN: Support efforts to combat sex discrimination. Sign
Women's Health Research Act and similar legislation to give more attention
to women's health problems. Seek to lift the ban on the use of fetal tissue
for cancer cure research, particularly breast cancer. Support testing of
RU-486, the controversial French abortion drug. Strive to hire and appoint
more women at all levels of government. Enforce tough sexual harrassment
guidelines in all government agencies. Would grant additional tax relief to
families with children.
	   X-RATINGS: Defend freedoms of speech and artistic expression
``by opposing censorship or `content restrictions' on grants made by the
National Endowment for the Arts.''
	   YOUTH: Require corporations with multi-million federal contracts
to create after-school, or summer, employment programs for urban and rural
disadvantaged youth.
	   YUGOSLAVIA: Support U.S. participation in United Nations airlift
to besieged Bosnia. Would seek U.N. authorization for air strikes to defend
relief operation and give U.S. ``military support'' for such an operation.
	   ZEROS: Even if Clinton does everything he says he will, after
four years there will still be nine zeros in a $141,000,000,000 deficit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LONG LIST OF REAGAN-BUSH POLICIES LIKELY TO BE UNDONE BY CLINTON 11/06
By David G. Savage
(c) 1992, Los Angeles Times 11/06

	   Here are the areas where President-elect Bill Clinton has
promised quick action:
	   -Gays in military: In 1982 policy directive, former Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger barred all homosexuals from military service,
whether or not there was evidence that they had engaged in overt homosexual
acts. This goes beyond military law which demands discharge for persons who
engage in ``indecent acts.''
	   ``I fully expect him to make an executive order'' ending the
prohibition on gays in the service, said Sandra Lowe, a New York attorney
who has worked on high-profile cases involving discharged homosexuals.
Clinton explicitly promised such a a move, but she added: ``The longer you
wait to do these things, the harder it gets to do them.''
	   -Women in combat: Congress has repealed laws barring women from
combat service, with the exception of Navy ships. A decision rests with the
new commander-in-chief, who is expected to open up these military jobs to
women.
	   ``First he should open aircraft'' to women, said Carolyn
Becraft, an expert on military women's issues at the Women's Equity Action
League.
	   -Fetal tissue: The new president is expected to lift a federal
ban on research using tissue from an aborted fetus. Scientists have
complained that this ban, first imposed by the Reagan administration in
1988, has halted medical research that could prove beneficial to patients
with Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease,
diabetes, spinal cord injuries and other conditions.
	   -RU-486: Last year, the Food and Drug Administration issued a
directive asking Customs agents to halt any importation of RU-486, the
French abortion pill. Previously, the agency had permitted Americans to
import unapproved drugs for their personal use. Under President Bush, the
FDA has also moved slowly in authorizing research on the abortion-inducing
drug.
	   -Abortion gag rule: Almost certainly, the Clinton administration
will throw out the Reagan-Bush regulation that forbids counselors in
subsidized family planning clinics from advising pregnant patients about
abortion. A solid majority of Congress has voted to rescind this policy,
and a federal appeals court blocked its enforcement this week.
	   -Overseas abortions: In still another abortion-related policy,
Bush ordered that no international aid funds go to organizations involved
in abortion in any manner. This has cut off funding to groups that promote
contraception and family planning in the Third World because some money
also pays for abortion services in other countries. Clinton has promised to
revise or retract this directive.
	   -HIV-infected immigrants: Under pressure from conservatives, the
Bush administration has barred immigrants and travelers with the AIDS virus
from entering the United States. Medical professionals and gay activists
have denounced the policy as unfair and unnecessary, since the virus cannot
be spread casually or through the air, as with tuberculosis. Clinton is
expected to lift the ban.
	   -Union contracting: In October, the Bush administration reversed
a long-standing Department of Labor policy and outlawed union work
agreements governing large projects. This won him the last-minute
endorsement of the Associated Builders and Contractors. But at the behest
of the AFL-CIO, Clinton is expected to reverse the Bush directive and
return to the previous pro-union policy.
	   -Union dissidents: At the behest of the National Right to Work
Committee, Bush issued a directive earlier this year requiring 35,000 local
unions to compile and report detailed accounts of their spending. This was
intended to protect the rights of dissidents in ``agency shop'' unions to
seek refunds if their dues were spent for political purposes. Union
officials complained that the policy would cost them millions of dollars
for accounting and paperwork, and Clinton is expected to repeal it.
	   -Council on competitiveness: This pro-business White House
council, headed recently by Vice President Dan Quayle, had become something
of a black hole for regulations intended to protect consumers, workers and
the environment. Hidden from public view, it has acted on complaints from
corporate officials and repeatedly blocked regulations emerging from
government agencies.
	   ``It's a secret court of appeals for big polluters,'' said
Daniel Becker of the Sierra Club. During the campaign, Clinton called the
council a ``back-door entrance for special interests'' and said that he
would alter its operation or scrap it entirely.
	   -Clean air: The Bush administration has withheld issuance of at
least 50 regulations required by the Clean Air Act of 1990 that were
intended to control smog, toxic pollution and ozone depletion.
	   Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House subcommittee
on health and the environment, said that he expects Clinton and Vice
President-elect Albert Gore to move quickly to issue new rules reformulated
gasoline, new exhaust standards for urban buses and required public notices
for companies which emit pollutants.
	   -National security: Clinton is expected to the restructure the
Cold War-oriented National Security Council so as to focus more of its
attention on economics and foreign trade. This proposed change in mission
is not only symbolic, but recognizes the changed world. Clinton has said
that his greatest foreign battles may well be economic, not military and
diplomatic.
	   -Haitian refugees: On May 24, Bush issued a directive ordering
the U.S. Coast Guard to intercept and to return all Haitian refugees
fleeing the troubled island. Both international law and the Refugee Act of
1980 requires the U.S. government to offer asylum to refugees who are
fleeing political persecution.
	   The Bush policy is being reviewed by the Supreme Court, but
civil rights activists say that they expect that Clinton will reverse it.
If so, refugees would be entitled to an interview to determine their
reasons for fleeing.
	   -Lobbying: Both Clinton and independent candidate Ross Perot
criticized the Washington ``revolving door,'' referring to officials who
leave government work, but go to work for special interests and return to
lobby their old agencies. The new president is expected to demand that his
appointees agree not to lobby for a period of perhaps five years after
leaving government.
	   -White House staff: The staff for the president includes
hundreds of employees housed in the old Executive Office Building next door
to the Executive Mansion. During the campaign, Clinton said that he would
cut this staff by 25 percent, which would symbolize both a desire to save
money and to return more authority to Cabinet secretaries.
	   -Classified information: The Reagan-Bush administration issued a
series of directives limiting the release of information by government
agencies. For example, President Reagan revoked a Jimmy Carter directive
that opened for review most classified documents after 25 or 50 years.
	   ``It is ridiculous that we have to litigate now to get access to
digests of Japanese messages intercepted during World War II,'' said
Washington attorney Alan Morrison.
	   Clinton has spoken generally about supporting the Freedom of
Information Act and activists expect that he will reverse the directives
that block the release of government documents.
	   -Independent counsel: In December, the independent counsel law
expires. This post-Watergate measure called for a panel of judges to
appoint an independent counsel when criminal allegations arose involving
top administration officials.
	   While Clinton has not committed himself to take action on this
law, many Democratic believe that he will announce his intention to
continue to follow the law as a way to ensure that allegations of
corruption are put to rest.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RANGE OF ISSUES EXPECTED TO POSE EARLY CHALLENGES FOR CLINTON
By Jim Hoagland
(c) 1992, The Washington Post 11/07

	   With the transition clock ticking the political life out of the
Bush administration, other nations are adjusting their hopes, expectations
and in some cases their actions to America's choice as president of a
youthful Southern governor intent on rebuilding the U.S. economy.
	   Having campaigned as ``a different kind of Democrat,''
President-elect Clinton now finds himself in a different kind of world -
one that increasingly questions the direction and force of U.S. leadership
in world affairs.
	   ``The world is accustomed to America taking several months off
every four years for an election and then getting back behind the wheel and
starting to drive again,'' a British banker observed last week after the
election. ``But this time there is a real question of whether America is
strong enough to take that wheel in hand again. That's the difference.''
	   ``America has a tradition in foreign affairs of leading or
leaving,'' added a Japanese diplomat. ``There seems to be little in the way
of a middle approach, which is probably what is needed today.''
	   A survey by Washington Post correspondents around the world
suggests that the long and bitter U.S. campaign, in which a weak economy
undermined an internationally experienced incumbent, has itself contributed
to a spreading impression abroad that Clinton will preside over a more
inward-looking, economically troubled United States with a diminished
interest in leading the post-Cold War world.
	   Foreign officials, opinion-makers and citizens fastened in the
campaign's home stretch not on a victory by Clinton but on the spectacle of
Bush failing. That contributed to an initially anxious reaction abroad.
	   But in the days since the election, many people abroad seem to
be taking a second look at the vigor and skill that Clinton and Vice
President-elect Gore demonstrated in winning and finding reason for hope
that the United States will rebound under a new team.
	   ``Clinton and Gore belong to the successor generation,'' a
German official said. ``This generation is falsely blamed as being more
interested in domestic affairs than in foreign policy. To the contrary,
they are the exchange generation - the people who did the Rhodes and
Fulbright scholarships. They are internationalists.''
	   The sense that things will at least not get worse under a
democratic administration was echoed in other capitals, including Moscow
and Tokyo. Japan - which is due to announce what will probably be a record
trade surplus with the United States about the time Clinton is inaugurated
- seems less nervous with Clinton than it would be with most Democrats.
``What we have heard from Mr. Clinton sounds like he is a believer in free
trade,'' said Jiro Tanahashi, vice minister of Japan's powerful Ministry of
Trade and Industry.
	   Clinton seemed to acknowledge the mixed texture of a world
greeting him with both anxiety and hope when he stepped forward in Little
Rock, Ark., the day after his election to declare that no foreign nation
``should doubt America's resolve'' or forget that President Bush has full
power until Jan. 20.
	   Clinton's quick response sought to reassure anxious allies and
to deter the United States's adversaries from testing him before he has had
a chance to shape his own agenda, his aides said.
	   But the Washington Post survey suggests that there will be no
moratorium on dramatic change during the 78-day transitio - an eternity by
the standards of most governments today - or during Clinton's promised
action-filled first 100 days in office.
	   Achieving power on a domestic mandate, Clinton divulged
remarkably little during the campaign about the specific steps he would
take to change the United States's posture in the world, and his foreign
policy advisers gave no sense to foreign officials who stayed in constant
touch during the campaign of any new architecture Clinton would impose on
foreign policy.
	   But a series of individual tests and challenges ``will soon
force him to come to solutions that will end up having universal
application,'' one adviser said, in effect connecting the dots into what
the rest of the world will see as a unified policy.
	   Situations in which foreign players are already moving to meet
changes they expect by Clinton include:
	   - Bosnia-Hercegovina. Clinton is expected to push for a quick
end to the international arms embargo against the former Yugoslav
republics, which has been penalizing Bosnia in its battle against Serb
forces. In anticipation, the Serb forces appear to be trying to tie up
loose ends of territorial conquest before Clinton is sworn in.
	   Barring unexpected action now, Clinton may have to share space
on American television screens on Inauguration Day with scenes of
winter-and-war catastrophe, and of mass death by starvation and exposure in
Bosnia.
	   - China. The other target of specific campaign criticism by
Clinton, China is defiantly digging its heels in for an expected
confrontation on human rights. Other nations, reacting more to memories of
the Carter administration than anything Clinton has said or done, also
express concern about a return to U.S. emphasis on human rights and
non-proliferation.
	   - Israelis and Arabs. These parties to the Middle East peace
talks, who are continuing the Bush-brokered talks in Washington during the
transition, are passing the word to Little Rock that the process can make
headway only if Clinton chooses U.S. interlocutors they trust. This echoes
Clinton's private remark to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
this summer that he will seek ``continuity, with new people'' in his Middle
East policy.
	   By their nature more than through calculation, other foreign
items will crowd themselves onto the Clinton agenda within days-if not
hours-of his inauguration. Foreign officials expect the most urgent to
include:
	   - Congressional pressures for protectionist laws, which could be
boiling by Jan. 20 as headlines focus on a threatened trade war with Europe
and the likely announcement by Japan of a new annual trade surplus from its
sales to the United States exceeding the record $52 billion surplus of
1987.
	   - Eastern Europe's struggling democracies, which, disappointed
by Bush's defeat and facing a counterrevolutionary trend in which
ex-communists or their allies are taking power back, will be appealing for
new security and economic guarantees from the West.
	   - The international coalition that Bush organized to fight Iraq
and keep sanctions in place, which will in essence have to be put back
together by Clinton, and quickly.
	   Turkey, concerned about Kurdish independence movements, is seen
as an increasingly weak link in the continuing campaign against Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein. Arab governments, concerned about Clinton's
sympathetic treatment of Israel in the campaign, may be more reluctant to
follow Washington's lead.
	   European support for the coalition continues to be strong.
Clinton issued his statement about U.S. resolve abroad as a warning to
Saddam after Britain had urged him to move quickly on Iraq, diplomatic
sources report.
	   Foreign governments accustomed to immediate changes of
government after an election and limited shuffling of the senior civil
servants who implement policies seem even more at sea during this
transition, which occurs in the most fluid international environment a U.S.
administration has faced since the beginning of the Cold War 45 years ago.
	   Russian officials desperately await signs that Clinton will
adopt the view of outgoing U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Strauss that ``a
strong and democratic Russia ... is important to the interests of the
United States,'' rather than listen to Americans who want to see a weak,
fragmented Russia.
	   Russia will press the new administration for ``a response as
bold, as deep, as strategic and as well funded'' as the U.S. Marshall Plan,
which helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II, Foreign Minister
Andrei Kozyrev said in an interview.
	   And, as it did with Western Europe, the United States must
accept that a rebuilding Russia may become a strong competitor in arms
sales, economics and other matters, and will have interests that sometimes
diverge from Washington's, Kozyrev added.
	   In India and other Third World countries, opinion makers
expressed relief that the United States will be so occupied with domestic
affairs that it will not be looking for adventures abroad or building a
``new world order.'' But a more common sentiment seemed to be concern that
the Third World, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, will be neglected in the
Clinton years, losing out on foreign aid and trade revenues.
	   Clinton will face startling new questions that no newly elected
U.S. president had to confront during that period. Whether to favor a
strong Russia or to back Ukraine as a counterweight and pressure point
against Moscow is only one of them.
	   This president-elect will have to consider if the United States
needs to keep any troops in Europe and maintain control of the NATO command
structure to achieve U.S. national security.
	   Another example involves South Africa, where black majority rule
has become a ``when'' question instead of an ``if''. How fast should the
United States push for that outcome? How deeply involved should the United
States be in helping the country's first post-apartheid government?
Clinton's disclosure that one of his first telephone conversations as
president-elect was with African National Congress President Nelson Mandela
suggests a high profile on the issue.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:58421 soc.culture.african.american:10690