Senate OKs Foreign Aid Bill; Help for Russia Cut

The Senate approved a $13.7-billion foreign aid bill Friday that sharply reduces U.S. assistance to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union and readjusts other spending priorities to reflect some of the disappointments of the new world order.

Passed 84 to 9 after several days of contentious debate over the Clinton Administration policy toward Haiti, the pared spending bill for the next fiscal year must now be reconciled with similar legislation already approved by the House.

Both bills would give President Clinton about $400 million less than he had requested for foreign aid in fiscal year 1995 and represent a decline of about $700 million in the overall foreign assistance budget.

As in years past, the lion’s share of the ever-shrinking foreign aid budget has gone to Israel and Egypt, which together would receive nearly $5.2 billion in economic and military assistance. African nations of the sub-Sahara also would fare better this year, receiving $802 million in development aid--a slight increase over last year.

But reflecting what senators said was their disappointment with the Administration’s handling of aid programs for the former Soviet Union, Russia and the other ex-Soviet states would receive $839 million in fiscal 1995--$61 million less than Clinton requested and a significant drop from last year’s $2.5-billion aid program.

Clinton, however, would get most of what he requested, although his allies in the Senate had to fight hard to beat back two Republican-led attempts to challenge his Haiti policy. Both efforts were defeated, but not until a long debate made it plain that most senators still oppose use of U.S. military force to depose Haiti’s rulers.

Expected challenges to Clinton’s handling of the crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina and North Korea were postponed or failed to materialize. GOP strategists decided not to engage in a fight over Bosnia after narrowly losing a bid earlier this month to force Clinton to lift the Bosnian arms embargo.

Critics of the Administration’s North Korea policy, however, won approval of an amendment that would bar Clinton from offering the Pyongyang regime any future aid unless he can certify that the North Koreans possess no nuclear weapons, have halted any nuclear weapons program and are not exporting weapons-grade plutonium to other countries.

Although largely academic, because the United States provides no assistance to North Korea, the provision could limit the incentives the Administration will have when negotiations aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program resume in Geneva.

The senators also inserted a number of other restrictions on the way Clinton could disburse foreign aid next year by earmarking specific sums for individual recipients--a practice that the House bill largely avoided this year.

Of $839 million appropriated for the former Soviet states, for instance, $250 million was earmarked for Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia, while $30 million was set aside to help the FBI and Russian police combat a rising wave of international crime.