House Backs Foreign Aid Bill; Veto Expected

Setting the stage for a foreign policy confrontation with President Clinton, the House passed a foreign aid bill Thursday that would end U.S. participation in the arms embargo on Bosnia-Herzegovina, slash foreign aid and require policy changes on issues ranging from refugees to relations with China.

In what amounted to an across-the-board no-confidence vote in the Clinton Administration’s conduct of foreign affairs, House Republicans won approval for the omnibus American Overseas Interest Act on a nearly straight party-line vote of 222 to 192.

The bill, similar to legislation pending in the Senate, represents the first time in 40 years that congressional Republicans have had the chance to put their imprint on foreign policy legislation.

Democrats called it isolationist. GOP leaders said it represented long-overdue recognition that the Cold War is over and that deficit-reduction must take precedence over foreign aid, especially to the developing world.

That debate, at least in the context of this bill, appears to be largely academic, however, because the bill was not passed with enough votes to override Clinton’s promised veto.

But the bill is significant as a measure of the wide differences between Congress and the Administration over foreign policy and as an indicator of the growing willingness of lawmakers from both parties to challenge the President’s authority in foreign affairs.

That willingness was most dramatically evident as the House voted overwhelmingly to adopt a Democratic amendment mandating an end to American participation in the United Nations arms embargo in the Bosnian conflict, which opponents argue penalizes the Muslim-led Bosnian government and aids the better-armed Bosnian Serbs.

*

Similar legislation also passed last year but in non-binding form. This time, in a reflection of mounting congressional frustration with the West’s continuing impotence in Bosnia, the House voted 318 to 99 to make the unilateral lifting of the embargo mandatory.

“We have an interest, as we did with Kuwait, in seeing that [Bosnia] is not destroyed. We have an interest in preventing genocide,” Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said in introducing the amendment.

The President’s supporters privately conceded that the lopsided vote also reflected growing congressional dissatisfaction with the Administration’s Bosnia policies. And, while Hoyer’s amendment will have little practical effect if Clinton vetoes the foreign aid bill, Republican strategists in both the House and Senate already are talking about reintroducing it as a stand-alone measure that could withstand a veto.

Bosnia, however, was by no means the only foreign policy issue on which the new GOP-controlled Congress signaled its intent to challenge the Administration.

There were a host of other policy directives and restrictions incorporated into the bill, including provisions that would:

* Cut off aid to Russia because of its arms and nuclear reactor sales to Iran.

* Reverse the Administration’s policy of sending Cuban refugees intercepted at sea back to Cuba.

* Force changes in relations with China by recognizing the independence of Tibet and by granting political asylum to women subject to forced abortions or involuntary sterilization--practices that Beijing has employed in its coercive efforts to control population.

Such restrictions would tie the President’s hands and amount to “an extraordinary assault . . . on [his] constitutional authority to manage foreign policy,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher said in a letter indicating that Clinton would veto the aid bill.

Democrats had hoped to use the recent weeklong Memorial Day recess to quietly craft a compromise with Republicans to avert a veto of the bill.

They offered to accept the steep cuts in foreign aid sought by the Republicans provided Clinton was given the flexibility to decide where to make them.

They also insisted that the Republicans drop provisions to dismantle the Agency for International Development, or AID, by folding its functions into the State Department.

But Republican leaders, confident that they had enough votes, showed no willingness to make such concessions.

“This is the first time in many, many years that a bill like this takes such a partisan approach to foreign aid,” complained California Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City).

Not so, retorted Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House International Affairs Committee.

“The Cold War ended half a decade ago, and it’s high time to reform our foreign policy agencies,” he argued. The GOP bill recognizes budgetary realities by concentrating dwindling foreign aid resources on “priorities that serve American interests,” he added.

*

Like the legislation pending in the Senate, the House bill would dismantle much of America’s foreign policy bureaucracy by abolishing AID, the U.S. Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--semiautonomous organizations that the Republicans criticized as wasteful relics of the Cold War.

Foreign aid would also be reduced by $3 billion over three years from the current level of about $12 billion a year, with development assistance taking the biggest cuts.

The only aid programs that would be spared from cuts were the two biggest: Israel and Egypt, which together receive $5 billion a year in U.S. assistance, would continue to be funded at current levels.

Administration officials have argued that, coming after successive cuts that have reduced the foreign aid budget by 45% over the past 10 years, the drastic reductions called for in the bill would leave the United States without the resources necessary to pursue key policy objectives around the world.

“Our nation’s foreign policy cannot be supported on the cheap. We cannot protect our interests . . . if we do not marshal the resources necessary to stand by our commitments,” Christopher warned in testimony before a Senate subcommittee last month.