Al & George Go Global

With a heightened focus on foreign policy, Vice President Al Gore is taking aim at what he sees as a vulnerability of George W. Bush, whose thinking on national security, he charges, is "noticeably blank."

In an address Sunday to the International Press Institute's congress of foreign journalists, Gore cast his Republican rival for the presidency as a puppet of "right-wing" ideologues such as Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and dangerously fixated on the Cold War past.

After seven years of hands-on diplomacy at the White House, Gore believes he outshines Bush in foreign policy expertise. He recently added a critique of Bush's opposition to a nuclear test ban to his campaign stump speech. The vice president will address international affairs again at the West Point military academy's commencement May 27.

In his Boston speech, Gore dismissed Bush as "noticeably blank" on 21st century national security challenges such as terrorism, narcotics trafficking, the global environment and international family planning, for which Gore supports additional U.S. aid.

"One has to assume that these gaps in Gov. Bush's foreign policy views and experience will be filled by the ideologies and inveterate antipathies of his party - the right-wing, partisan isolationism of the Republican congressional leadership," Gore said.

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's top foreign policy adviser, shot back that the speech lacked credibility, "somewhat typical of the vice president."

"He has this tendency to say that he's going to do one thing and in fact he's ... one another for seven years," Rice said, calling the Clinton-Gore record haphazard and incoherent.

Gore, who has pledged to make the rejected Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty the first measure he submits to the Senate if elected, attacked Helms' declaration last week that he will block any new arms control pacts until a new president is inaugurated.

The administration is negotiating a START III weapons pact with Russia and hopes to adjust the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for a limited U.S. missile defense system to protect against attacks from rogue nations.

"If Gov. Bush were to inherit from us an arms control agreement so clearly in the best interests of the American people, is Sen. Helms the last word?" Gore asked.

He criticized Bush for promising to heighten the threshold for American intervention in overseas crises and get involved only where there is a direct U.S. interest.

"Gov. Bush dangerously fixates on the Cold War past when speaking of the use of force. He suggests that he would not intervene to relieve even the brutal repression of ethnic cleansing and genocide," Gore said.

"We must reject the new isolationism that says, don't help anywhere because we cannot help everywhere."

Rice countered, "If what the vice president is saying is that the post-Cold War mission of American armed forces is to just intervne in other people's civil wars because we might be able to help, I think that's a headline."

Gore defended his work with the Russians, which Bush has criticized as solicitous and negligent of increased corruption in Moscow, and said Bush wrongly viewed Russia and China as America's enemies instead of as "vital partners."

Rice said Gore had mischaracterized Bush's views.

"The governor has not said that Russia and China should be enemies; in fact, he has said that China is a competitor and we should reach out to Russia," she said. "It is very much like the vice president to distort (Bush's) record."

Gore lashed out at supporters of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, legislation backed by Bush to establish closer military ties with Taiwan. He said they were "blind to its consequences: A sharp deterioration in the security of the region."