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.