Angry House Acts to Pressure Tokyo on Gulf Crisis Cost : Defense: Measure calls for U.S. troop cuts in the island nation. Japan gets most of its oil from the Mideast but offers only $1 billion to defend it.

Angry House members overwhelmingly approved an amendment Wednesday aimed at pressuring Japan to share more of the financial burden of deploying U.S. troops in the Middle East, where Japan gets the majority of its oil.

The measure, attached to a $283-billion military programs bill, would require the removal of 5,000 U.S. troops per year from Japan if the Japanese failed to pay all costs of stationing U.S. forces in that nation.

Rep. David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), sponsor of the amendment, protested that “Japan gets almost 70% of its oil from the Middle East, yet has offered to pay only $1 billion for the defense of the Persian Gulf.”

The 370-53 vote for the amendment reflected the depth of congressional exasperation over the failure not only of Japan, but also of West Germany and other U.S. allies, to foot more of the bill for Operation Desert Shield.

Minutes earlier, in fact, the House cast a related vote that was characterized as a protest against NATO allies seen as lax on burden-sharing. By 249 to 174, the House upheld a prohibition in the defense bill against placing a U.S. air wing at an expensive new base in Crotone, Italy--a move that has been called NATO’s top priority.

“This is not the time for NATO-bashing,” Rep. David O’B. Martin (R-N.Y.) argued vainly in seeking to strike the provision from the defense measure.

Similarly, the House brushed aside objections to the Bonior amendment. Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) argued that it would be counterproductive because a reduction in the 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan would harm American security interests in the Far East far more than Japan’s.

Bonior suggested that the proposal was intended primarily as a warning that the United States, with severe budget problems and the need to fund pressing domestic needs, was going to insist more than ever on burden-sharing in its international defense efforts.

“This is a wake up call for a new world order,” he said, invoking the term used by President Bush in his Tuesday night speech to Congress describing the changing post-Cold War scene.

The House action on funding for the Mideast operation came as the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and guided-missile cruiser Ticonderoga, two of the first ships to bolster Operation Desert Shield, steamed into port at Norfolk, Va.

The Eisenhower and its support ships sailed through the Suez Canal Aug. 8 and patrolled the Red Sea until Aug. 24. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney visited the carrier during its deployment to review operations.

“We were really the only U.S. forces that were ready at that time to interdict a further Iraqi aggression into Saudi Arabia,” Rear Adm. Thomas Lynch, commander of Cruiser-Destroyer Group 12 and Battle Force 6th Fleet told reporters aboard the Eisenhower.

In other defense-related action, the House rejected a burden-sharing proposal designed to pressure South Korea into assuming more responsibility for defending itself against North Korea.

An amendment by Rep. Robert J. Mrazek (D-N.Y.) would have withdrawn 13,000 of the 43,000 U.S. troops in South Korea over the next three years, nearly doubling Cheney’s plan to pull out 7,000.

The measure was defeated, 265 to 157, after Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ojai) warned that an increased withdrawal might encourage North Korea to launch an invasion.

“North Korea has done nothing to lessen its threat or change its dictatorial policies to warrant us lowering our guard,” he said.

The House approved a Democrat-sponsored plan aimed at having a bipartisan commission decide on closings of military bases, instead of the defense secretary as under current law.

Democrats charged that Cheney used partisan politics last January in recommending the closure or realignment of 47 bases, 93% of which were in House districts represented by Democrats.

Republicans offered, then withdrew, a proposal that would have made it easier for Cheney to proceed with the base closures. Rep. Lynn Martin (R-Ill.) charged that Democrats were being hypocritical in proposing huge troop cuts while opposing for parochial reasons the shutdown of bases.

The House will continue debating the defense bill today as conservatives, pointing to new threats represented by the Persian Gulf crisis, seek to restore funding to programs that were cut deeply by the House Armed Services Committee.

The committee chopped $24 billion from President Bush’s defense request for fiscal 1991, which begins Oct. 1. The cut was $6 billion deeper than a bill passed by the Senate just after Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

An attempt will be made today to keep alive production of the B-2 Stealth bomber, which the pending House bill would terminate after completion of 15 previously funded planes. Also, proponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile program, known as “Star Wars,” will try to restore $1.5 billion in funding cut by the Armed Services Committee.