Battered at home, Clinton heads for Asia

Battered at home, Clinton heads for Asia

WASHINGTON (Reuter): Battered at home, President Bill Clinton headed to Asia yesterday to preach the virtues of free trade in hopes his appearance on the world stage will burnish his image in America.

Still shell-shocked from Tuesday elections in which opposition Republicans seized Congress from his Democrats, Clinton was to leave the mess behind for 10 days on a trip centered around the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, next week.

In a rambling, 41-minute speech on Thursday, Clinton said the United States would work with other Asian leaders at the annual APEC summit to set concrete goals to open the way for doing more business in Asia.

"I hope and expect we'll set a target date for achieving free and open trade among all the Asian-Pacific economies," he said.

In individual meetings with various leaders, he said he would raise U.S. concerns about other issues including the progress of human rights and democracy in the region, issues he said will require "patience and persistence".

"Even though there may be no sudden breakthroughs, we must continue to be persistent. As in the past, I will be doing everything I can to be frank in terms of our differences as well as our potential partnerships with the Chinese, with the Indonesians, and with others," he said.

But a key goal of the Clinton White House is to show the folks back home, through television images, their president is a commanding figure on the world stage and add to his recent foreign policy successes in the Middle East, Haiti and Iraq.

This process was to start on Friday morning when the president delivered a departure statement in the Rose Garden laying out his objectives, then continue when he presides over a rally at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base during a refueling stop.

Clinton is to arrive in Manila, Philippines, late on Saturday, then flies on to Jakarta on Sunday night. He leaves there on Wednesday night for a few days of rest in Hawaii and returns to Washington on Sunday, Nov. 20.