- WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate
agreed on Wednesday to spend $592 million on a huge new embassy Baghdad,
setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives, which rejected
funding for the project because of the high cost.
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- Senators approved the embassy funding 54-45 as part of
an $81 billion emergency spending bill to pay for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and help fund tsunami relief. The House of Representatives
removed the money for the Baghdad compound, which would be the largest
U.S. embassy in the world, when it passed its version of the bill last
month.
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- Nevertheless, supporters of the emergency spending bill
said they expected the Senate to pass the measure on Thursday. Once the
Senate approves its version, it will have to work out differences with
the House before the bill can be sent to President Bush for his signature.
The Bush administration supports building the embassy.
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- Senators also approved a plan to spend nearly $390 million
on 650 additional border patrol agents and unmanned aerial vehicles to
patrol the southwest border with Mexico. Some conservative Republicans
in Congress have targeted the Baghdad embassy project to hold down spending
and trim the record budget deficit, which hit $412 billion last year.
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- "The emergency supplemental (spending bill) should
only contain items that we need to fight the war on terror," said
Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, who argued that Congress should
spend just $106 million on constructing the embassy and decide on additional
funds later.
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- But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran,
a Mississippi Republican, said full funding was needed now to quickly provide
a safer environment for Americans in Iraq. He said U.S. personnel are "trying
to carry out the work of the embassy in a palace formerly occupied by Saddam
Hussein that is not safe" from "terrorist" activities and
that "there is a perimeter that is very difficult to defend."
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- The Senate also voted to reverse the Pentagon's plans
to retire an aging aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, and maintain
the minimum of such ships at 12 until at least 2008. Alaska Republican
Sen. Ted Stevens criticized the decision, saying it stood in the way of
modernizing the navy. "The very fact that this 40-year vessel is out
there...is wrong to begin with," he said.
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- The Senate spending bill also provides $907 million for
victims of last December's Indian Ocean tsunami, slightly less than the
version passed by the House.
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- Pakistan News Service © PakTribune.com Pvt Ltd 2003-2004
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- http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=102447
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