Senate Won’t Limit Clinton on Troops : Foreign policy: But lawmakers request President consult with them before sending GIs to Haiti. Vote is called a ‘warning signal’ to the White House.

WASHINGTON — The Senate refused Thursday to limit President Clinton’s authority as commander in chief by forbidding him to dispatch troops to Haiti.

But in what most lawmakers described as a “warning signal” to the White House, the lawmakers also voted overwhelmingly to request that Clinton consult with the Senate more closely before deciding on any military intervention--in Haiti or elsewhere.

The outcomes of the back-to-back votes were predetermined by intensive negotiations with the Administration over the last few days.

Sponsored by conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), an amendment to a defense spending bill that would have barred the use of funds for a military mission to Haiti was defeated, 81 to 19.

Moments later, the bipartisan compromise sponsored by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) was approved, 98 to 2, with Sens. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) as the only dissenters.

The votes put to rest--for the time being at least--a series of congressional challenges to Clinton’s handling of foreign policy in the wake of the Oct. 3 battle that took the lives of 18 American peacekeepers in Somalia.

“The President is very pleased,” White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said. “He drew the line. . . . He made it clear that he would not tolerate any attempt to tie his hands, affect his ability as commander in chief.”

Although the outcome did not, in the end, tie the President’s hands, it did illustrate how much latitude the Administration has lost in its conduct of the nation’s foreign policy since the debate began two weeks ago as a reaction to what were widely perceived as inept steps in Somalia.

“This was a strong warning . . . that, while he may want to focus on health care and the economy, the President cannot ignore foreign policy,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said after the vote.

Congress must be convinced “that not only the President but also his top advisers are thinking realistically about foreign policy, or else the next time . . . it will be impossible to pull senators back from the brink” of a war powers confrontation, said Leahy, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that appropriates foreign aid.

The Administration “needs now to draw into its foreign policy team more experts, more thinkers on foreign affairs . . . to begin defining in a clear way the decisions we have to make about participation in multilateral (peacekeeping) actions in the future,” added Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Senate debate--and the wilting criticism heaped on Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Defense Secretary Les Aspin--was “a clear warning that there is a vacuum in foreign policy but a vacuum that Congress must not fill haphazardly,” Boren said.

Early last week, after the Senate voted to cut off funding for the Somalia mission on March 31, it looked for a time as if the lawmakers were set to leap into that vacuum with a series of “hastily crafted amendments that would have legislated foreign policy in ad hoc fashion” on Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Democratic leadership aide said.

Intensive lobbying by the White House and Democratic leaders checked those efforts. But in the end, many senators said they recoiled from stronger measures on Haiti and Bosnia not because they were happy with Clinton’s handling of foreign policy but because they did not want to let anxiety over Somalia push them into a confrontation over the commander in chief’s constitutional authority.

Had the Senate passed either the Helms amendment or a much tougher version of the Haiti compromise that Dole was circulating earlier this week, “it would have been devastating” to Clinton’s freedom to conduct foreign policy, Boren said.

It also would have placed the United States in “the impossible position of not being able to cooperate with other nations” in containing crises around the world, he said.

Those dangers now circumvented by the compromise, a number of senators said they believe the debate, as bruising as it was, will have a positive impact on foreign policy by guaranteeing closer consultation between Congress and the White House.

“It has tightened up the President’s thinking a great deal and established all sorts of new ties and consultations,” said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), citing as an example a promise made by U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright to brief senators on activities at the United Nations on a monthly basis.

While Dole and other Republicans backed away from a confrontation with Clinton, a handful of conservative senators did not. Led by Helms, they continued to push for legislation that would have denied funds for military intervention in Haiti without congressional approval.

Renewing his blistering attacks on Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Helms said that CIA officials told him in a closed-door briefing for senators Wednesday night that they expect the political violence in Haiti to increase if the ousted president returns to Haiti to reassume his office.

Repeating allegations that Aristide had encouraged his followers to “necklace” their political opponents--a practice in which oil-soaked tires are placed over their victims’ necks and set on fire--Helms also indicated that the CIA agreed with his characterization of the Haitian leader as a “demonstrable killer.”

But while they conceded that Aristide is not, in one lawmaker’s words, “a dead ringer for the tooth fairy,” most senators said the Haitian leader’s human rights record is not the main issue for them.

“The issue is not Aristide but what American interests are in Haiti,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Those interests, he said, “lie not in restoring Aristide to power but in keeping Haitians in Haiti . . . in keeping them from scrambling to this country as refugees.”

CIA officials did provide a closed-door briefing about Haiti and about Aristide to Senate leaders Wednesday night, but the CIA refused to give details of what its briefers said, and congressional sources said that Helms’ account was selective and misleading--so much so that CIA Director R. James Woolsey returned to the Senate for yet another private briefing Thursday.

According to these sources, the CIA told senators that Aristide is generally competent to run Haiti. “Does he (Aristide) have problems? Yes,” one source familiar with the intelligence evaluation said. “Could he do a good job? Yes.”

One Senate staff member confirmed that the CIA’s evaluation of Aristide maintains that the Haitian leader has some psychological problems.

Dole said that he agreed to the compromise because he does not want to “tie the President’s hands” in dealing with the Haiti problem.

But he also noted that the resolution, while non-binding, lets Clinton know that there “will be strong opposition in Congress if force is used to put Aristide back in power.”

Times staff writer Jim Mann contributed to this story.