Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 21 2001 (IPS) — Congress has approved next year’s foreign aid bill, providing large increases in spending on population and health programmes but withholding an administration request to increase counter-narcotics spending in Latin America.

Overall, the 15.4-billion-dollar aid bill represents an increase of about 400 million dollars over the 2001 level and about 200 million dollars over President George W. Bush’s request.

Despite the increases, the United States will again be the least generous of the major developed nations, devoting only 0.1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to foreign aid; less than half the average percentage given by most other donor nations.

Non-governmental groups voiced worry that U.S. aid for Afghanistan in the coming year will be taken from the 2002 foreign aid bill, with the result that every dollar spent on the country’s recovery will be subtracted from the accounts of other needy nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The United Nations has estimated reconstruction costs there over the next five years of at least 6.5 billion dollars, and a bill introduced recently in Congress calls for Washington to shoulder some 1.7 billion dollars of that total, beginning in 2002.

“The question is, will there be any new money available for Afghanistan, or will they take it away from Africa, Asia, and the Americas?” said Elise Smith, chairwoman of the Coalition for Women’s Economic Development and Global Equality (Women’s EDGE). “If they did, we think that would be dead wrong.”

Aid advocates have sought a supplemental aid bill for Afghanistan but have been told in recent meetings with administration officials that no plans are being made for this in light of the sharp economic slowdown and the swift disappearance of previously anticipated budget surpluses.

As it stands, the aid bill includes almost four billion dollars in military aid and training, most of which will go to Egypt and Israel.

Washington’s closest military ally, Britain, has pressed it to substantially boost aid as part of a new global “Marshall Plan” to tackle the root causes of terrorism.

Visiting Washington this week, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown called for a doubling of all aid from donor nations – from 50 billion dollars to 100 billion dollars a year – in coming decades to eliminate poverty and ensure that all nations gain economically from globalisation.

Some 100 U.S. lawmakers, including members of Bush’s Republican Party, recently joined the call for substantial increases in foreign aid as necessary adjuncts in Bush’s “war against terrorism”. The administration itself, apart from Secretary of State Colin Powell, has given both appeals a cool reception.

The aid bill passed late Thursday, after weeks of backdoor wrangling over contributions to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). A last-minute compromise between anti-abortion and pro-choice forces provides up to 34 million dollars to UNFPA, an increase of nine million dollars over 2001, making the U.N. agency the only multilateral organisation to receive a hefty increase in U.S. funding.

Congress also added significantly to administration requests for child survival and health programmes, for which it approved a total of 1.43 billion dollars – some 371 million dollars more than 2001 spending and 443 million dollars more than Bush had asked for.

It also increased spending for international HIV/AIDS programmes from 315 million dollars last year to 475 million dollars in fiscal 2002, which began Oct. 1.

“We think this is a good first step toward achieving a substantial increase in U.S. development assistance,” said Shanta Bryant, a spokeswoman for InterAction, a coalition of 160 development, church, and relief groups here.

The only major account substantially below Bush’s request was for counter-drug operations in Latin America, particularly the Andean region. Of the 731 million dollars requested, Congress approved only 625 million dollars.

As in previous years, by far the biggest aid recipients will be Israel and Egypt, which together will receive almost five billion dollars, or about one-third of the total.

Despite the reductions in anti-drug aid, Colombia still will be the third biggest recipient at more than 300 million dollars, while Jordan, Peru, Ukraine, and Russia will each receive aid worth around 200 million dollars.

Multilateral economic aid programmes come to about 1.3 billion dollars, most of which is earmarked for U.S. contributions to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and other multilateral soft-loan facilities. The bill also provides the balance of what Washington owes – some 229 million dollars – for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Trust Fund to reduce the debt service of the world’s poorest nations.

About 2.2 billion dollars will go to the Economic Support Fund (ESF), a facility normally used to provide balance-of-payments support to countries of strategic value to U.S. foreign and defence policy.

As in the past, some of the aid, especially military assistance, comes with conditions. In order for Colombia to continue receiving military aid, for example, the secretary of state must certify that the nation’s army is severing its links to right-wing paramilitaries and is handing over soldiers suspected of human rights abuses to civilian courts for prosecution.

The bill lifts other restrictions on U.S. aid, such as a ban on military assistance to Azerbaijan, an oil-rich Caspian nation that has been locked in conflict with Armenia.

Congress also agreed to drop a long-standing condition on aid to UNFPA where each dollar spent by the agency in China would have to be deducted from the U.S. contribution. The condition was imposed at the behest of anti-abortion forces that asserted UNFPA supports coercive abortions in China, a charge the agency has long denied.

The fight over UNFPA and population funding in general held up final passage of the bill by more than a month. Anti-abortion forces in the House of Representatives, which have largely succeeded in limiting both the amount of U.S. population aid and the overseas groups that may receive it over the last six years, were forced to compromise with Senate negotiators who favoured a more liberal policy.

In the end, almost 450 million dollars was earmarked for family planning and reproductive health programmes, an increase of 21.5 million dollars over last year’s level.

In exchange for these concessions, anti-abortion forces insisted that the administration’s “Mexico City policy” – which bans U.S. population aid for overseas groups that perform or advocate the use of abortions – not be repealed as had been called for under the Senate version of the foreign-aid bill.