unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/24/89)
Senate Lifts Restrictions from Aid to El Salvador
Posting Date: 09/24/89 Source: UNITEX Network, Hoboken, NJ, USA
Host: (201) 795-0733 ISSN: 1043-7932
(Associated Press, September 20, 767 words, DATELINE: Washington)
Heeding pleas to give El Salvador's new president "a chance to
succeed," the Senate voted Wednesday to boost his country's aid
to $$90 million for the coming year and remove restrictions on
the money.
On a vote of 67-33, the lawmakers stripped from a $$14.4 billion
foreign aid bill a provision that would have cut the aid into
three slices to be sent at four-month intervals and would have
given Congress what amounted to veto power over the final
installment.
Minutes later, they approved a substitute that would increase
the military aid from $$85 million to $$90 million and offered
rhetorical praise for peace talks now taking place between the
Salvadoran government and the leftist FMLN guerillas. That vote
was 82-18.
To have attached strings to the aid would have been an unfair
gesture of no confidence in Salvadoran President Alfredo
Cristiani at a time when there is a chance to end a decade of
civil war in his country, opponents of the restrictions argued.
Cristiani was sworn in June 1 as the winning candidate of the
rightist Arena party.
"It will be a blow to him politically, at the very moment - the
very hour - when we ought to be encouraging him to go forward,"
said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who joined in a rare
alliance with conservatives, including Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.,
to oppose the restrictions.
"He is doing exactly what we've been trying to accomplish over
the last 10 years. We ought to give President Cristiani a chance
to succeed."
Proponents of the restrictions, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy,
D-Vt., argued that Cristiani's party has been linked to
death-squad activity in the past and has still not completely
eliminated human rights violations.
The Senate still has to complete work on the overall aid measure,
then work out differences with the House before sending the bill
to Bush for his signature.
The annual foreign aid money bill pays for a wide variety of
programs aimed at bolstering the military power of friendly
countries, supporting economic development and giving direct
infusions to foreign governments.
In the first concrete gesture of congressional disenchantment
with Bush's response to Eastern Europe, the bill contained $$45
million for economic aid to Poland, substantially bettering the
administration's $$10 million request for next year.
Poland has for the first time in more than four decades elected
a non-communist-dominated government, making it an irresistible
target for rewards by lawmakers.
As they worked through a series of other controversial issues in
the bill, the lawmakers voted 52-48 to reverse a four-year-old
policy and resume U.S. aid to the United Nations Population
Fund, over objections that the fund supports Chinese
forced-abortion policies.
Lawmakers backed a provision in the bill providing $$15 million
to the United Nations population control agency, which last
received U.S. money in 1985. The Reagan administration shut off
aid then in light of charges that China has a
one-child-per-family policy enforced through compulsory
sterilization and abortions. President Bush has continued that
policy.
"The People's Republic of China continues to engage ... in
ethically heinous, grievous violations of the human rights of
parents" and of unborn children, argued Sen. Gordon Humphrey,
R-N.H., an abortion opponent.
But the sponsor of the policy change, Sen. Barbara Mikulski,
D-Md., said even the State Department's Agency for International
Development has found that while the UN agency operates in
China, it does not engage in or support such objectionable
policies. She included in her provision a stipulation that all
U.S. money be kept in a separate account and that none of it go
to pay for operations in China.
As usual, the largest recipients of aid in the bill are Israel
and Egypt, a reward for their participation in the Camp David
peace process. Israel would get $$1.8 billion in military aid
and $$1.2 billion in economic assistance, and Egypt would get
$$1.3 billion in military and $$815 million in economic aid.
Another large benefit would go to the Philippines, which would
get at least $$160 million toward the U.S. share in a
multinational economic development program led by Japan. That
amount was $$40 million less than Bush asked for.
Other money was earmarked for: Pakistan, $$230 million each in
military and economic aid; $$565 million in development aid for
Africa; $$500 million in military aid for Turkey; $$350 million
in military aid for Greece; $$115 million for the war on drugs;
$$615 million for the Export-Import Bank and $$370 million for
refugee programs.
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