Washington, DC — The U.S. Congress has approved emergency funding for Liberia as part of the $87 billion spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan that passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives last Friday.
The two measures contain major differences, with the House version including funding for Sudan and for United Nations peacekeeping in Liberia while the Senate language focuses on Liberia's emergency need for humanitarian assistance and help with reconstruction. The differences will be resolved by a conference committee that will be convened to reconcile the two versions of the larger Iraq bills.
"This money will go a long way to stabilize the West African region as a whole," said Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), chief sponsor of the Senate amendment, which designates $200 million to assistance for Liberia. The amendment's co-sponsor, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), said the $200 million is needed to address Liberia's humanitarian crises and was written to allow the Bush administration "to spend these funds any way it wants."
The House voted $100 million "to respond to or prevent unforeseen complex foreign crises, especially in Sudan and Liberia." In addition, the House approved $245 million for peacekeeping in Liberia to cover the U.S. assessed contribution to the UN peacekeeping operation there.
"It's not yet a done deal," said Krista J. Riddley, advocacy director for Africa at Amnesty International. "Lobbying has to continue to ensure that conferees maintain both the $200 million passed by the Senate for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and the $245 million included in the House bill for peacekeeping," said Riddley, who is part of a loose coalition of American groups and individuals known as Liberia Watch that has been seeking to mobilize U.S. support for Liberian peace efforts.
Coalition members contacted members of both houses and appealed for grass-roots pressure to encourage Congressional action during the floor debate on monies for Iraq. "We knew that funding for Liberia's immediate emergency had to be included in the Iraq supplemental," said Bernadette Paolo, vice president of the Washington-based Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa. Otherwise, U.S. spending on humanitarian assistance for Liberia would "fall far short of what is so urgently needed," she said.
An appeal for passage of the Chafee-Leahy amendment was issued by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Monrovia, Michael Francis. "I implore you, on behalf of the Liberian people, to assist us in addressing Liberia's human rights, peace building, and reconstruction needs," Francis said in an October 14 letter to Senate leaders. "Without strong U.S. support, Liberia threatens to fall once more into violence and chaos, possibly becoming a haven for criminal and terrorist activity on the African continent."
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Chafee and Leahy both stressed that the $200 million would not raise total spending but would be offset by shifting $100 million from the "Emergency Fund for Complex Foreign Crises" and another $100 million "from wherever in the $20 billion reconstruction funding that the Department of Defense sees fit," Chaffee said.
The amendment passed the Senate on a voice vote, with co-sponsorship from one other Republican, Norm Coleman, the Senate's only Independent, James Jeffords (VT),and Democrats Tom Dashle (SD), Harry Reid (NV), Joseph Biden (DE), Joseph Lieberman (CT), Russell Feingold (WI), Frank Lautenberg (NJ) and Mary Landrieu (LA).
In addition to disaster relief and peacekeeping funds, the House bill includes a $2 million reward for the capture of the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, according to the Associated Press. Taylor, who is living in exile in Nigeria, has been indicted for war crimes by a United Nations-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone, Liberia's neighbor.
Last week, Rep Frank Wolf (R-VA) released letters to Secretary of State Colin Powell and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan calling for pressure on the government of Nigeria to turn Taylor over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The letters were signed by 26 House members, including Ed Royce (R-CA), chairman of the Africa subcommittee of the International Relations Committee.
The letters to Powell and Annan said in part: "We have no doubt that you have found Charles Taylor's catalogue of crimes against humanity as abhorrent as we have. If we fail to bring men like this to justice, how can we expect similar atrocities not to occur in the future?"
