Clinton Urges Training, Jobs for Veterans : Holiday: The governor says the nation is obliged to assist those who won the Cold War. He contends they must not be dismissed as ‘yesterday’s heroes.’

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In the quiet of a tree-shrouded national cemetery on Memorial Day, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton called on the country to honor its obligations to active veterans by ensuring that they will have retraining and jobs as the size of the military is whittled down.

Before flag-bearing relatives of war dead, many of them stooped and graying, Clinton reiterated a demand that cutbacks in military spending be matched, dollar for dollar, with investment in domestic industries that could employ those displaced by the retrenchment.

“We should recognize our obligations to those who won the Cold War,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said.

“When there are defense cutbacks, the servicemen and women, the people who worked in the defense industry, the scientists and the engineers, should not, indeed must not, be cast aside as if they were yesterday’s heroes of no use today.”

Specifically, Clinton endorsed investing military savings into technological advances like high speed railways and communications networks that could utilize the brainpower that has gone into the development of sophisticated missile systems.

He also endorsed a proposal by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who has proposed a system of crediting former military personnel with active duty years toward a pension if they work in a profession like teaching or police work. The plan is meant to cover those who had intended to stay in the military until they completed 20 years of service.

“If they won the Cold War, certainly they can help us to win the peace,” the governor declared.

The Memorial Day service at the Little Rock National Cemetery was one of two major commemorations in the Arkansas capital, and the only daytime event in a low-key campaign day for Clinton.

In the evening, he attended an election eve rally at a courthouse in Benton, Ark. The state’s voters cast their primary election ballots today, along with their counterparts in Kentucky and Idaho.

Although the political content of his speech was relatively spare, Clinton did raise the specter of President Bush’s recent trip to Japan, during which the Japanese prime minister was quoted as saying he felt “sympathy” for the United States. That anecdote is a familiar part of Clinton’s campaign speeches.

“We owe on this Veterans’ Day--this Memorial Day--to the veterans who made the supreme sacrifice, our determined resolve that there will never be a time where we permit another nation to be freer or safer or stronger or to let its citizens be more free to grow up to fulfill their God-given potential,” he said.

He did not address it in his holiday remarks, but Clinton has called for a cut of one-third in the nation’s military budget by 1997, more than Bush has proposed but less than that favored by many high-ranking Democrats.