Clinton vows to fight Republican aid cuts

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned Congress that she will fight to block a Republican effort to restrict aid for Israel's neighbors, Pakistan and leftist-led Latin American nations.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee last week approved a bill that would cut $6.4 billion from President Barack Obama's budget requests and impose restrictions in controversial areas such as abortion and climate change.

Clinton expressed "profound concern" in a letter to the committee's Republican chairwoman, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and said she would recommend that President Barack Obama veto it if it reaches him.

The restrictions in the bill "would be debilitating to my efforts to carry out a considered foreign policy and diplomacy, and to use foreign assistance strategically to that end," Clinton wrote in the letter sent Tuesday.

"Should this bill be presented to the president, I will recommend personally that he veto the bill," she wrote. AFP obtained a copy of the letter, which was earlier reported by the newspaper The Hill.

But even without a veto, it remains unclear if the bill will survive. Obama and Clinton's Democratic Party retains control of the Senate after losing the House of Representatives in elections last year.

The House committee approved the spending bill along party lines after a marathon two-day debate, in which Republicans said that the United States --on the brink of defaulting on its debt -- needed to cut foreign spending and toughen its line against US rivals.

Clinton charged that the bill had "crippling restrictions on security assistance where maximum flexibility is needed," pointing to cuts on aid to Arab states including Egypt which is transitioning to democracy.

The measure would also impose conditions on civilian aid to Pakistan, ending a five-year, $7.5 billion package without proof that the country where Osama bin Laden was killed in May is acting against militants.

The Obama administration recently suspended one-third of US defense aid to Pakistan over similar concerns. But it has pledged to pursue long-term civilian assistance in hopes of nurturing an environment less friendly to extremism.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011