War Bill Won’t Snub the French

A measure to punish the French and other foes of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq will be stripped out of a war-spending bill expected to be approved by Congress this week, a GOP leader said Tuesday.

With the Bush administration warning that the retaliatory measure could further strain U.S.-French relations, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said it would be dropped during House-Senate negotiations on the nearly $80-billion spending bill.

The House last week approved on a voice vote a measure that would bar France, Germany, Russia and Syria from receiving U.S.-funded contracts to rebuild Iraq -- a reaction to the opposition by those nations to the military operation that aims to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. A similar measure was offered but withdrawn in the Senate after the State Department objected.

“It was a good point to make ... but we need to work with the president,” DeLay said. “We got our message across.”

Rep. George R. Nethercutt Jr. (R-Wash.), who led the push for the economic sanctions, said Tuesday that he would seek to resurrect the measure.

“Should it be necessary, we will have many opportunities in the days ahead to reassert the principles embodied in the amendment,” he said.

Lawmakers have been annoyed at the French because of their outspoken opposition to the war. In the House cafeteria, French fries and French toast have even been renamed “freedom fries” and “freedom toast.”

Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.), the only Cajun in the House, has removed the French-language section from his congressional Web site. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) has pushed for the Veterans Administration to sever ties with a French-owned marble manufacturer that supplies U.S. military headstones for national cemeteries.

In opposing Nethercutt’s measure, the State Department said it would hurt U.S. efforts to seek international financial support for Iraq’s reconstruction.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage also warned that it “might elicit a negative response from other trading partners, to the detriment of U.S. jobs and industry.”

Congressional negotiators are working to reconcile differences in the House and Senate versions of the war-funding bill by the end of the week. Both measures also would provide more than $4 billion for homeland defense and more than $3 billion in aid to the struggling airline industry.

The White House, which has objected to the airline aid package as “excessive,” expressed opposition Tuesday to a $225-million provision of the Senate bill to provide a 26-week extension in unemployment benefits to displaced airline workers. Extending benefits to a specific industry would be “unusual, unfair and potentially harmful to our national unemployment system,” White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. said in a letter to lawmakers.

The administration also expressed concerns that the bill would limit the Pentagon’s ability to spend funds as it sees fit “to respond promptly to changing circumstances.”

“The situation in Iraq is fluid and unpredictable,” Daniels said. “We do not know when the period of intense combat will end, nor do we know how much damage there will be to Iraq’s infrastructure or what our international partners will contribute to this effort.”

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Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.