State Department seeks boost to advance wars on terrorism, AIDS
Fri Jan 3,11:29 AM ET
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
WASHINGTON - The State Department is seeking substantial budget increases to fight the global AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic and to counter terrorism, including more than $1 billion in new funds to tighten security at embassies, U.S. officials say.
High on the department's wish list is $100 million to hire an additional 399 officers for Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites)'s initiative to promote U.S. foreign policy, said the officials, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
The battles against terrorism and AIDS, a more quiet foe that claimed 3.1 million lives around the world in 2002, have helped shape the department's request to the White House budget office for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is to submit his budget for fiscal 2004 to Congress early next month. In the meantime, Congress has not completed action on the department's spending requests for the current fiscal year, which include more than $16 billion to combat terrorism.
The 2004 budget will aim to sustain a broad effort against terrorism that involves economic assistance, foreign military training and economic development.
A wave of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment has translated into attacks and spurred increased security at U.S. embassies.
Powell's initiative is designed to fill vacancies in the foreign service and to place new emphasis on teaching foreign audiences what the United States is trying to accomplish.
A senior department official declined to provide the precise amount that department would seek in counterterrorism spending.
Powell, meanwhile, has given high priority to the struggle against the HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS epidemic.
"The positions we hold in our governments give our voices resonance at home and abroad," he told a group of foreign ambassadors last month. "We can and must use our voices to convince others of the urgency and gravity of this global problem."
Powell said every nation ? regardless of its size, economic status or political strength ? is vulnerable to the disease.
As the department prepared its requests, six former national security advisers who have served both Democrats and Republicans asked Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), who now holds the job, to support a substantial increase in foreign spending.
In real terms, foreign spending was 30 percent higher during the Reagan administration, they wrote Rice.
"Our diplomats will play a critical role in assembling coalitions that will defeat global terrorist organizations, and they need the tools to do the job," they said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The six former officials ? Frank C. Carlucci, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Richard V. Allen, William P. Clark and Brent Scowcroft ? said they were confident Congress and the public would support a substantial increase in spending.
The boost, they said, "will serve as a vital complement to military and intelligence upgrades in this country's long battle against global terror."
The projected increase in spending to combat AIDS drew a mixed reaction from the Global AIDS Alliance, which links more than 60 groups worldwide.
Dr. Paul Zeitz, executive director, said he was encouraged but also said $2.5 billion in new funds, a three-fold increase over current spending, was essential to finance prevention, treatment and other programs.
The Congressional Black Caucus (news - web sites), in a letter to Bush last month, said "it would be impossible to overstate the devastation caused to date by the global AIDS pandemic or the need for a greater response from the United States."
The caucus said 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, 29.4 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa, and 14 million children have bveen made orphans by the disease.