Vice President Al Gore speaks to the International Press Institute at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. (Globe Staff Photo / Jim Davis)

BOSTON -- Vice President Al Gore dismissed George W. Bush's foreign policy thinking as "noticeably blank," casting his Republican presidential rival Sunday as a puppet of "right wing" ideologues such as Sen. Jesse Helms and dangerously fixated on the Cold War past.

In an address to the International Press Institute's conference of foreign journalists, Gore issued a broadside against Bush, the Texas governor, on everything from Russia and China to arms control and nuclear testing.

Gore dismissed Bush's foreign policy as lacking on 21st century national security challenges such as terrorism, narcotics trafficking, the global environment and international family planning, for which Gore supports additional U.S. aid.

"One has to assume that these gaps in Governor Bush's foreign policy views and experience will be filled by the ideologies and inveterate antipathies of his party -- the right-wing, partisan isolationism of the Republican congressional leadership," Gore said.

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's top foreign policy adviser, shot back that the speech lacked credibility, "somewhat typical of the vice president."

"He has this tendency to say that he's going to do one thing and in fact he's ... done another for seven years."

Gore, who has pledged to make the rejected Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty the first measure he submits to the Senate if elected, chafed at last week's declaration by Helms, R-N.C. -- "out of overt distaste for the president," Gore said -- that he will block any new arms control pacts until a new president is inaugurated.

The administration is negotiating a START III weapons pact with Russia and hoping to adjust the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for a limited U.S. missile defense system to protect against attacks from rogue states.

"If Governor Bush were to inherit from us an arms control agreement so clearly in the best interests of the American people, is Senator Helms the last word?" Gore asked.

He criticized Bush for promising to heighten the threshold for or American intervention in overseas crises and get involved only where there is a direct U.S. interest. The Bush campaign, on the other hand, says Clinton-Gore foreign policy has been haphazard and incoherent.

"Governor Bush dangerously fixates on the Cold War past when speaking of the use of force. He suggests that he would not intervene to relieve even the brutal repression of ethnic cleansing and genocide," Gore said.

"We must reject the new isolationism that says, don't help anywhere because we cannot help everywhere."

Rice countered, "If what the vice president is saying is that the post-Cold War mission of American armed forces is to just intervene in other people's civil wars because we might be able to help, I think that's a headline."

The speech in Boston's historic Old South Meeting Place, built by the Puritans in 1729, was the latest in a series by Gore in which he paints Bush as lacking the experience and knowledge to be an effective president and world leader. Bush rebuts that argument with an emphasis on character.

Outside, several dozen demonstrators protested U.S. military aid to Colombia with posters saying Gore had "blood on his hands."

On Russia, Gore defended his hands-on diplomacy, which Bush has criticized as solicitous and for turning a blind eye to building corruption in Moscow, and said Bush wrongly viewed Russia and China as America's enemies instead of as "vital partners."

Gore lashed out at supporters of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, legislation backed by Bush to establish closer military ties with Taiwan, saying they were "blind to its consequences: a sharp deterioration in the security of the region."

Rice said Gore had wrongly characterized Bush's view of Russia and China.

"The governor has not said that Russia and China should be enemies; in fact he has said that China is a competitor and we should reach out to Russia," she said. "It is very much like the vice president to distort (Bush's) record."

On the same day that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., slammed Gore as "the invisible man" in the administration's push for permanent normal trade status for China, an aim of Republican congressional leaders as well, Gore said in his speech, "I will continue to press the Congress to support it this year."

Gore defended himself in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition," saying he has been making speeches and "making calls on a regular basis" to round up support.

To gain the widest possible audience for his foreign policy offensive, Gore offered interviews to all the TV networks and won a Page One story in Sunday's New York Times by leaking his speech to the newspaper a day ahead.

Gore plans another foreign policy address -- an area where he believes Bush is particularly vulnerable -- at the West Point military academy commencement.

Separately, on CNN, Gore said he would consider retired Gen. Colin Powell for a spot in a Gore administration. While ruling out running for vice president, Powell has said he would consider an appointed position in the next administration.