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AP: Constructive Engagement- Americ



Subject: AP: Constructive Engagement- American Style

Constructive Engagement- American Style
   By ROBERT BURNS
 Associated Press Writer

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate passed a $12.25 billion foreign aid bill
Friday that would impose limited economic sanctions against Burma while
fully funding President Clinton's program for fighting the illegal drug
trade abroad. But it also set up a fight with the House over abortion
funding.
   The bill, approved 93-7, must be reconciled with a $11.9 billion House
version that differs in several respects, including an absence of Burma
sanctions and a restriction on abortion funding, before it is sent to
Clinton.
   The money is for the 1997 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
   A House-Senate conference committee will start work on a compromise
version of the bill next week, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chairman of the
Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, told a news
conference.
   One of the toughest disputes likely will be over abortion, McConnell
said. The Senate rejected House language that would bar funding to any
private group that advocated or performed abortions anywhere in the world.
The ban would apply even to groups that spent their own, not government,
money for abortions.
   With help from Republicans, the Clinton administration staved off an
attempt during Thursday's floor debate to make a total cutoff of economic
ties to Burma, the Southeast Asian nation whose military leaders refused to
accept the 1990 landslide election victory of pro-democracy candidate Aung
San Suu Kyi.
   The sanctions proposal, sponsored by Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, was
attached to the 1997 foreign aid bill, which also included a measure to
restore the administration's request for $213 million for international
drug-control efforts. The Senate Appropriations Committee had cut it to $53
million.
   At the State Department, spokesman Nicholas Burns applauded the Burma
measure.
   "It provides the administration the flexibility that we need to press
the Burmese regime to make progress in the areas of democracy and human
rights and counter-narcotics," Burns said.
   He noted that the administration would be compelled to cut off all new
U.S. investment in Burma -- but not trade in goods and services -- if
Clinton determines that the Burmese authorities have harmed or exiled Suu
Kyi or have engaged in large-scale repression or violence against the
pro-democracy opposition.
   The Cohen measure calls for an immediate end to U.S. government
assistance to Burma except for humanitarian and counter-narcotics aid and
funds for the promotion of human rights and democratic values. It prohibits
granting entry visas to Burmese government officials except as required to
staff their mission in the United States.
   McConnell, who fought for tougher sanctions on what he called a "pariah
regime," predicted that the administration would not enforce any of the
Cohen sanctions. McConnell favored an immediate and total ban on U.S.
economic ties to Burma.
   The sanctions, as proposed by Cohen, would last until the U.S. president
certified to Congress that Burma had made "measurable and substantial"
progress in improving human rights practices and implementing democratic
government.
   Those favoring the tougher approach to Burma, led by McConnell and Sen.
Daniel Moynihan, D-N.Y., argued during floor debate Thursday that the
United States had a moral duty to unilaterally cut off ties to Burma to
protest human rights abuses. They predicted that other countries would join
in the action, even though Burma's neighbors, including Japan and South
Korea, now oppose sanctions.
   McConnell said the U.S. oil companies Unocal and Texaco had lobbied hard
against his sanctions proposal. He said the oil giants have commercial
stakes in Burma. Total U.S. investment in Burma is relatively small;
McConnell's office said estimates vary but apparently exceeded $200 million
between 1989 and 1994.
   Another amendment restored the $25 million requested by the
administration to support the Korean Peninsula Economic Development
Organization, which provides North Korea with energy as part of a 1994 deal
to dismantle its nuclear arms program. The aid is conditioned on, among
other things, North Korean cooperation with efforts to recover remains of
U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War.
   The Senate also adopted an amendment to prohibit additional spending on
military education and training for Mexico until that country arrests and
prosecutes or turns over 10 most-wanted drug traffickers who were indicted
in the United States and are believed to be in Mexico.
   The Mexico measure, sponsored by Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., drew
strong criticism from Burns, the State Department spokesman, who said it
imperiled the improvements achieved recently in Mexican cooperation on
anti-drug efforts.
   
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