*EPF312 04/04/01
Congressional Report, Wednesday, April 4
(Drug certification law) (380)

PANEL'S PLAN WOULD SUSPEND ANTI-DRUG COMPLIANCE STANDARDS

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has unanimously approved legislation that would suspend for three years a current U.S. law requiring the listing of countries to be designated as complying with U.S. anti-drug efforts.

The three-year trial measure, approved by a vote of 17-0 late April 3, would eliminate the requirement that nations be fully cooperative with the United States to gain certification and foreign aid. Instead, the president would identify the worst offenders among drug-transit and drug-producing countries and designate those that failed to make substantial efforts to comply with international counter-narcotics agreements and other anti-drug commitments.

The measure, proposed by Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat, Connecticut) would require the White House to release one list annually, identifying the penalized non-complying nations. The worst drug-producing and drug-transiting countries would lose U.S. foreign assistance unless the president granted a waiver based on considerations of national interest.

In the meantime, the current three-step process would be suspended for three years while the Bush administration sought a new certification process. Under the current process, which became law in 1986, foreign nations can lose U.S. assistance if they are found not to be "fully cooperating with the United States" in anti-drug efforts.

Also April 3, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina), announced that on April 16 the committee would visit Mexico for a joint session with the Mexican Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. No standing committee has ever held a joint hearing with a legislative committee of another country, Helms said.

In other legislative matters, the committee approved four resolutions by unanimous votes:

-- Urging Serbia to release all imprisoned Kosovar Albanians;

-- Calling for continued sanctions against Libya until it admits responsibility for the 1989 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland;

-- Encouraging international study programs;

-- Seeking a sense of the Senate resolution recalling the forcible deportation of Chechens to central Asia in 1944.

The panel also approved the nomination of William Howard Taft IV as the State Department's legal counsel.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Website: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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