CLINTON CALLS FOR REGISTRY OF SEX OFFENDERS : DOLE STEPS UP ATTACKS ON ADMINSTRATION.

Byline: Steven Thomma Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

President Clinton proposed a new plan Saturday to make America's homes safer from criminal sexual predators, but found himself dogged yet again by questions about the ethics in his own White House.

Clinton, on a two-day campaign swing after a week's worth of bad news at home in Washington, tried to keep the subject off the Whitewater affair and the investigation into his administration's unauthorized use of FBI files on Republicans.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton said he wants a national system to track sexual offenders when they move from state to state.

Meanwhile his rival, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, kept up the pressure with a hard-hitting radio speech that accused the Clinton administration of unethical conduct.

Dole said the White House use of the FBI files hit at a core American tradition, the privacy of its citizens.

``Since our nation was founded over 200 years ago, the American people have held the expectation that their privacy was sacred, and that government could not, without serious cause, pry into the lives of our citizens,'' Dole said.

He also said the Clinton administration misused the FBI by urging the agency to investigate former White House travel office employees fired to make way for Clinton allies.

``In doing so, they misused the FBI and revealed a pattern of ethical arrogance, the full extent of which, even today, we are just beginning to discover,'' Dole said.

``We have learned the privacy of literally hundreds of Americans was trampled on. . . . The Clinton administration came into office vowing to set a new ethical standard. Unfortunately, the standard they have set cannot be defended,'' Dole said. ``America deserves better.''

Clinton did not respond directly to Dole or refer to the FBI files.

But his deputy campaign manager, Ann Lewis, said Dole ``offered only negative, partisan attacks on the president'' because he had ``no new or positive ideas about the future of this country.''

Clinton preferred to talk about crime, using his radio address to boast of an overall reduction in crime nationwide and to announce that he had ordered Attorney General Janet Reno to prepare a national system to track sexual offenders. The move echoes legislation proposed in Congress.

``Nothing is more important than keeping our children safe,'' Clinton said, ``especially from sexual predators, people who . . . are likely to commit their crimes again and again.''

He noted that the 1994 crime bill required states to compile lists of sexual offenders and gave them the power to notify local communities when sexual offenders move in. He recently signed a law making that notice mandatory.

``Now we must take the next step,'' he said, namely letting one state know when a sexual offender moves there from another state. Sens. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and Joseph Biden, D-Del., recently proposed legislation to create a national registry.

``The police officer in Cleveland should be able to get information on all known sex offenders in Cleveland, whether they committed their crimes in New York or Los Angeles,'' Clinton said.

The proposal highlighted the two-day trip that came after a week of bad news at home for Clinton and his wife. He spoke here Saturday to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, following a fund-raising trip to Houston and a speech on job gains to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Chicago on Friday.

Last week, Republicans on the Senate Whitewater Committee all but accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of obstructing justice in their investigation of the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas.