House OKs Bill Sharply Reducing Foreign Aid : Congress: Measure includes ban on funds for groups involved with abortions. Senate is expected to water it down.

The House of Representatives--ending a long, bitter, partisan procedural row--approved a $12-billion foreign aid bill Tuesday that would reduce overseas assistance sharply and reinstitute a Reagan-era ban on funding for organizations that perform or promote abortions abroad.

The spending bill, passed on a 333-89 vote, bears the heavy imprint of the Republican majority, which opposes the Clinton Administration’s foreign policies in several important areas. The measure now moves to the Senate, which is expected to water down some of the tough House provisions.

The House action capped a partisan brawl that erupted two weeks ago over an unrelated issue--a seat on the Ways and Means Committee--and stalled the spending bill. Democrats used one procedural delay after another to protest what they charged was the ham-handed way the GOP was running the House.

The bill would cut funding to nearly every foreign aid recipient save Israel and Egypt. It would provide more than $1.5 billion less than last year’s bill and nearly $3 billion less than President Clinton requested for the coming fiscal year.

Development assistance and aid to Africa were hardest hit, in line with the Republican view that such bilateral programs have been largely a failure in the developing world. Direct development assistance to Africa would be slashed by nearly 35% from last year’s level under the legislation. U.S. contributions to the World Bank would be cut by 40%. Aid to the former Soviet states would be cut by 29%. And funding for the Agency for International Development would be reduced by 10%.

Over the Administration’s strong objections, Republicans also attached provisions to the bill that would:

* Cut off all aid to Haiti unless it conducts presidential elections this year that are certified to be free of fraud or other electoral abuses.

* Reduce economic assistance to Turkey by more than half of the $46 million originally in the bill as punishment for its campaign against its minority Kurds.

* Overturn the executive order that Clinton signed early in his term to scrap the “Mexico City policy”--named for a 1984 population conference--that barred U.S. funding for any organization that performs or supports abortions.

In voting to reinstate the prohibition, first imposed by former President Ronald Reagan, the House also acted to ban funding for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities unless it suspends all activities in China, whose population control programs include forced abortions.

The House action on the Mexico City policy poses a particularly direct challenge to Clinton. But Administration officials have not indicated whether he will veto the aid bill if the provision is in the version that comes to his desk.

Senate Republican leadership sources predicted that many of the restrictions imposed by the House will be modified, if not dropped, in the final legislation.

The sharpest point of contention in the House debate was the partisan dispute over a contested seat on the Ways and Means Committee. Democrats were angered by a GOP attempt to seat Rep. Greg Laughlin of Texas, its latest convert from the Democratic Party, on the tax-writing panel and staged what amounted to a procedural filibuster of the aid bill.

Forcing one procedural vote after another, the Democrats snagged the aid bill for two weeks to protest the GOP’s refusal to give them another seat on the committee to balance Laughlin’s addition on the Republican side. The unsuccessful protest finally ended late Monday night, opening the way for completion of the spending bill.

As expected, Israel and Egypt, the two sacred cows of the foreign assistance budget, were the only countries to emerge untouched by the budget-cutting zeal of the new Republican majority. But the $3 billion in military and economic assistance voted for Israel and the $2.1 billion for Egypt--amounts unchanged from last year--left some supporters worried that both countries will be tempting targets for cuts in future years.