Clinton Praises Judgment of Jury, Urges Healing, Harmony Across U.S. : Administration: President speaks before giving address on economy. His new attorney general, Janet Reno, says, ‘Justice was done.’

WASHINGTON — President Clinton, urging the nation to begin healing from the divisions of the Los Angeles riots, said Saturday the convictions of two L.A. police officers established “what a lot of people have felt for two years, that the civil rights of Rodney King were violated.”

With the trial now over, the nation should strive to build a society where differences are respected and similarities are celebrated, Clinton told a cheering crowd in Pittsburgh, Pa., before delivering a speech about his economic package.

“Unless we really do believe that underneath the differences of race and religion and ethnicity, underneath the differences of political party and political opinion, there is a core in each one of us given us by God and which we share in common which obliges us to respect one another and to wish to live together in harmony and peace, none of the other things I came to talk to you today can come to pass,” Clinton said.

Speaking shortly after the federal verdicts were announced, Clinton also said the jury’s findings serve as “a reminder that our courts are the proper forum for the resolution of even our deepest legal disputes. This verdict was a tribute to the work and the judgment of the jury and the efforts of the federal government in putting the case together.”

In Washington, former Atty. Gen. William P. Barr, the Bush Administration official who initiated the federal case against the police officers, echoed Clinton’s comments. He said the verdicts affirmed his decision to order Justice Department officials to continue prosecution efforts even after a state court found the four officers not guilty on all but one count last year, a move that triggered rioting and looting in Los Angeles.

“It vindicates the judgment we made to proceed with the case and the confidence we had in the team we put together,” Barr said in a telephone interview from his home in suburban Washington. “The prosecutors did an excellent job and I thought all along we could present a strong case” against the officers.

Barr said he would not quarrel with the decision to acquit two of the officers. “I believe in the jury system,” he said. “I’m not going to second-guess the jury. I think justice was done.”

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno also welcomed the jury’s decision. “Justice was done,” she said at a news conference. “The Department of Justice is going to do everything it can to continue to bring prosecutions to assure that the civil rights of all citizens throughout America are protected.”

Reno planned to talk with community leaders in Los Angeles by telephone over the weekend, a Justice Department official said, but had no immediate plans to visit the city, despite a suggestion by the Rev. Jesse Jackson that she do so. Reno was aware of Jackson’s suggestion, but had not talked to him, said Carl Stern, director of public affairs for the Justice Department.

Reno is concerned that flying to Los Angeles uninvited could be interpreted as an attempt to upstage federal prosecutors there, Stern said.

“If she is asked by community leaders who want her to come out to Los Angeles, I am sure she will clear her calendar to go out there,” he said. “But she is busy here and has not made any plans yet to rush off, uninvited, to Los Angeles.”

As of late Saturday, Clinton had no plans to go to Los Angeles, a White House press office official said.

The verdicts also drew praise from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, who was appointed by Clinton to serve as the Administration’s point person for Los Angeles in the wake of the riots.

“This trial should be viewed as a great step in a long march to justice, as another brick torn from the walls of inequity that still separate too many Americans from their neighbors,” Brown said.

The Administration was committed to “working with community groups, local officials and businesses in a comprehensive effort to rebuild and revitalize all the neighborhoods of Los Angeles,” he said.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, applauded the jury’s decision, but called on Congress and the Clinton Administration to support legislation he has introduced that would make it a federal crime for police to use excessive force regardless of their intent.

Conyers, who chairs a House panel investigating charges of abuse by law enforcement officers, said in a statement that “police brutality is a national epidemic, and I am convinced that a disproportionately high percent are racially based.”