WASHINGTON, Oct 17: The US Senate dealt a blow to President George Bush’s request for aid for Iraq, passing an amendment requiring Baghdad to pay back half of the 20 billion dollars Washington is allocating for reconstruction.

The vote came on Thursday night after the Bush administration lobbied hard for days against the amendment, arguing that the money — part of the president’s 87 billion dollar budget supplement — should be in outright grants.

The vote represents the first major congressional defeat for Mr Bush on an issue relating to Iraq. Both houses of Congress are dominated by members of President Bush’s Republican Party.

The amendment was adopted by a vote of 51 to 47 following a long and impassioned debate that left the outcome hanging until the final moments.

Eight Republicans voted in favor of the measure while four Democrats opposed it.

Opposition leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, said that in adopting the amendment, the Senate “sent a strong, bipartisan message to this administration: It must do more to ensure that America’s troops and taxpayers don’t have to go on shouldering this costly burden virtually alone”.—AFP