Impeachment Issue Follows Clinton to Asia

SEOUL —  Questions about the ongoing impeachment process in Congress followed President Clinton to the other side of the globe Saturday, but the distance seemed to aid the president’s effort to appear detached from the historic examination of his fitness for the presidency.

“I think the less I say about what should happen to me at this point, the better,” Clinton said at a news conference in the South Korean capital.

He did indicate, however, that he took some comfort from independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s statement that his office had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton in the 1993 firings of the White House travel office staff, the flap about the White House use of confidential FBI files, or the scandal around the 20-year-old Whitewater land deal that launched the independent counsel’s probe.

“I do believe that the long-awaited acknowledgment that there is nothing on which to proceed in the travel issue and the file issue and Whitewater is a positive thing,” Clinton said. “I surely think it will help us to get this over with.”

White House officials acknowledged that it did not hurt the president’s stature to be traveling abroad during the spectacle of congressional hearings on impeachment.

The president did not watch any of the gavel-to-gavel live coverage of Starr’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, which was aired on CNN-International while he was in Japan on Friday. But he did catch a short clip of the proceedings on a news show, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

The president was put on the spot about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky on Thursday in Tokyo, when an Osaka housewife asked him if his wife and daughter had forgiven him and said flatly that she could not forgive her husband in such a case.

But Clinton’s most extensive comments on the subject during his Asia visit so far came in answer to a question by an American reporter at a news conference. Putting the whole episode in the nation’s past was clearly the president’s goal. As he has repeatedly said in reference to the Lewinsky matter, Clinton stressed that he felt confident his fate was ultimately in the hands of the American people.

“I trust the American people, and I hope Congress will do the right thing in a nonpolitical way, if you will, to get beyond the partisanship and go on,” Clinton said.

The president said he felt it would be “simply not appropriate” for him to comment on whether Congress should decide on some alternate punishment to impeachment for him, such as an official rebuke. And he made it clear that he has already paid a price for his wrongdoings.

“There has been a lot of suffering--that is different from punishment, although it’s hard to see the difference sometimes as you’re going through it,” Clinton said.

Although his legal team--including private and White House lawyers--and a political team have been working around the clock to ensure that the ongoing political process does not ensnare the president, Clinton said his own efforts to overcome his transgressions are on a much more intimate level.

“For me, this long ago ceased to be a political issue or a legal issue and became a personal one. And every day I do my best to put it right, personally,” Clinton said.

Although the president himself did not mention it, the White House clearly took encouragement from the decision of Starr’s ethics advisor to quit in protest.

Sam Dash’s “actions speak for themselves,” Lockhart said of the respected Senate counsel from the Watergate hearings.

Dash said Starr acted improperly by advocating Clinton’s impeachment in front of Congress, adding that he had strongly warned Starr against his public testimony.

The White House was also cheered by indications from some moderate Republicans after the hearing that there are not enough votes for impeachment.

“It looks like there are some people who are reaching the same conclusion that we have reached . . . that there is nothing in the referral or in the allegations that have been made that rise to the standard of impeachment,” Lockhart said.