WASHINGTON, Feb 5: In the heavily military-oriented budget proposals sent to the US Congress for the fiscal year 2003, the Bush administration proposes to spend 24,300 million dollars on foreign affairs _ a 1,000 million dollars increase over the current year’s budget.
But this allocation too has its military component, with 5.2 billion dollars set aside for programmes related to the “war on terrorism”. Among provisions made in the foreign affairs section of the budget proposals are efforts designed to enlist new support from Pakistan and other countries in the region for the US campaign in Afghanistan and to assist the Pakistan government through diplomatic and economic assistance.
In the summary on foreign affairs released here, there is no mention of new aid to Israel, which is always the largest recipient of US assistance. Current aid levels to the country are pegged at 2.04 billion dollars in military and 720 million dollars in economic aid.
The proposed budget would include a four per cent increase in spending for the State Department to 9,234 million dollars. It would allocate 2,740 million dollars for international development assistance programmes administered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In all, 13,886 million dollars would be spent on international assistance programmes.
However, for the first time, support for international financial institutions is to be linked to performance. The budget proposes 178 million dollars to help meet US international commitments under a plan to clear all arrears.
