
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 4, 1991                   TAG: 9103040301
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN FOREIGN AID, LITTLE CHANGE

THE MIDDLE East has cornered the market on U.S. foreign aid since the mid-1970s. That's when Israel and Egypt made peace and were rewarded with enhanced financial support from the United States.

The picture is unlikely to change in fiscal 1992. The Bush administration wants to boost overall foreign-aid outlays, in decline since 1985. But worldwide, the lion's share will continue going to Israel and Egypt. Next-largest share would be for Turkey, a member of NATO and of the anti-Saddam coalition.

Granted, the Gulf War makes it difficult to shift priorities. Even before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Middle East posed the greatest threat to global peace in the post-Cold War era. The threat requires attention, some of it in financial assistance. With the war over, it is a time for rebuilding, and for rewarding allies.

But, as the war demonstrated (and another demonstration was hardly needed), the tens of billions of U.S. dollars poured into the region over the past two decades have not ensured peace. Most of the aid went for military purposes, and the Mideast has been engulfed in war. It also has no more democracy than when the Camp David accords were signed.

The United States has friends, special relationships and the like there, but the principle of self-rule is making few additional inroads in the region. Our forces stood between a dictator and a feudal monarchy, and we fought to restore another feudal regime to power.

Secretary of State Baker says the $14.5 billion proposed for foreign aid in fiscal 1992 gives special emphasis not only to countries helping the war Surely, Eastern European countries now trying to put communism behind them deserve more help. against Iraq, but also to fledgling democracies in Eastern Europe.

But those nations so lately free from Soviet domination will get only 4 percent of U.S. economic aid. That's only about 2 percent of the entire foreign-aid budget.

No one suggests that America revert to the days of the Marshall Plan. But it's worth remembering that in a five-year period soon after World War II, we poured almost $40 billion - the equivalent of $185 billion today - into Western Europe, prostrate from war and threatened by communism.

Surely, Eastern European countries now trying to put communism behind them deserve more help than the White House proposes. Even Central America, a hotbed of militarism, will get more under the administration's proposal - and likely do less with it.

by CNB