WASHINGTON, Oct 18: The US Senate on Friday night granted President Bush’s request for $87 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House of Representative has already approved the request.

The Bush administration will now have to battle with the lawmakers over whether some of the aid for Iraq should be a loan.

The 87-12 vote in the Senate came after the House approved its version of the package by a 303-125 vote. The House earlier on Friday accepted an amendment by Congressmen Jim Ramstad, a Republican, and Dennis Moore, a Democrat, to shift $98 million from Iraq reconstruction to help troops on leave pay for their trips home.

For the first time since the Vietnam War, the military is giving service members with 12 months in the field in Iraq or Afghanistan a 15-day home leave. But after flying into the port of entry in this country, they must pay for the rest of theirs trip out of their own pockets. The Senate approved similar language in its debate.

The president and Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, pressed lawmakers to make all reconstruction money grants rather than loans. They argued that loans would worsen Iraq’s foreign debt situation and undermine efforts to get other nations to write-off their outstanding loans to Iraq.

But the administration was confronted by lawmakers who said constituents were disturbed by the idea that the United States, while racking up record federal deficits, was giving billions in aid to a nation sitting on the second-largest oil reserves in the world.

By a 55-44 vote Friday, mostly along party lines, the Senate rejected an amendment by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle that would have barred future US aid to Iraq unless President Bush certified that foreign countries’ contributions equalled those by the United States.

In the House, Democrats sought to convert half the $18.6 billion in the House bill for reconstruction but lost, 226-200.