After months of presenting himself as a Southern candidate with a good civil rights record, Gov. Bill Clinton has suddenly found himself under criticism for a classic gesture of racial separation: playing golf at an all-white country club.

Mr. Clinton was chided by a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Little Rock and by Gov. L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia for playing golf on Wednesday at the Country Club of Little Rock, an upper-crust bastion in the Arkansas state capital. The rebuke by Dale Charles, president of the Little Rock chapter of the civil rights group was first reported on Thursday by The Washington Times.

Mr. Clinton quickly admitted that he had made a mistake and vowed never to play there again until it was integrated.

He said as part of his defense that his chief of staff, William Bowen, was leading an effort to integrate the club. Mr. Bowen said he and others were sponsoring nonwhite candidates for membership in the organization, but no application had been acted on yet. Club officials did not return telephone calls today.

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"I'm going to do something unconventional for a politician -- when I make a mistake, I'm going to say I made a mistake, not go into some long, labored exercise," Mr. Clinton said today as he campaigned here, speaking of his efforts to "unite the nation across racial and economic lines" and accusing President Bush and the Republican Party of dividing the country racially. Call to Wilder