WASHINGTON -- Jesse Helms, the incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, has set off another furor with a comment -- later partially retracted -- that President Bill Clinton "better have a bodyguard" if he visits military bases in North Carolina.


Returning to earlier remarks he had made about widespread disrepect for Clinton among the military, the North Carolina Republican said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here."


Helms said later in the day that the remark was a "mistake," but he did not apologize or back off his criticism of Clinton's handling of defense policy.


It was the third time in the two weeks since Republicans won control of Congress that the 73-year-old conservative senator has stirred controversy and thrown party leaders off stride.


Senate Democrats were quick to express outrage over Helms' comments, and Clinton called them "unwise and innappropriate."


"The president oversees the foreign policy of the United States, and the Republicans will decide in whom they will repose their trust and confidence," Clinton said at a news conference. "That's a decision for them to make, not for me."


While Helms' incendiary words clash with the more conciliatory message that some Senate Republicans have been attempting to send, there have been no moves to deny him the chairmanship.


Instead many Republicans, including Robert Dole, soon to be the Senate majority leader, and incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have distanced themselves from Helms' remarks without rebuking Helms himself.


Tuesday's uproar broke out when Helms, in a Monday interview with The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, attempted to explain his controversial remark Friday that he did not believe Clinton was "up to the job" of serving as commander-in-chief. This remark followed an earlier suggestion that Clinton would get friendlier treatment from his committee if he delayed a vote on the new world trade treaty due to come before a special session of Congress next week.


Helms dug himself a new hole. He was quoted by the newspaper as saying Clinton is extremely unpopular on military bases in North Carolina and adding, "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."


Shortly after noon, Helms' office issued a statement quoting the senator as saying he did not "expect to be taken literally" in what he described as "an offhand remark" in a telephone interview with a local reporter.


"I far too casually suggested that the president might need a bodyguard, or words to that effect," he said.


"I made a mistake last evening, which I shall not repeat," he said, adding that his further contacts with the news media will be "entirely formal."


But Helms repeated his earlier assertions that the president "has serious problems with his record of draft avoidance, with his stand on homosexuals in the military and with the declining defense capability of America's armed forces."


In Washington, Democrats were quick to go on the attack.


Recalling that President John Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, Senator Christopher Dodd, a candidate for Senate Democratic leader, said, "To suggest on this day of all days, Nov. 22, that an American president's life might be in jeopardy because [he] visited an American military base suggests my colleague from North Carolina doesn't seem to know what country he's in. This is not a banana republic."