Senate panel OKs aid to foreign abortion groups
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Senate committee on Thursday joined the House of Representatives in defying a White House veto threat and moving to reverse a ban on contraception aid to overseas groups that offer abortion.
The Senate Appropriations Committee included the proposal in a $34.24 billion foreign aid bill that also places new emphasis on fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The measure now goes to the Senate floor.
Republicans on the panel warned that President George W. Bush would send back to Congress any measure that allowed assistance to organizations that offer abortions.
"I think it is likely the president would veto the bill if that language remains in it," said Sen. Sam Brownback, a conservative Kansas Republican and presidential hopeful.
The appropriators approved $5.09 billion to combat HIV/AIDs. It was $940 million above what Bush had sought for fiscal 2008, which starts on October 1.
They also approved $889 million for refugee assistance programs and $1.35 billion for U.N. peacekeeping operations. The peacekeeping money was slightly more than the House provided and $245 million more than Bush requested.
"We can't say we want peacekeeping operations to go on and stop genocide in Darfur and not pay our dues on peacekeeping," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat guiding the legislation.
The committee barred construction of a U.S. Embassy in Libya until Tripoli pays off families of those killed in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and in an attack on a discotheque in Berlin in 1986.
