Senate approves Pentagon spending bill

WASHINGTON - The Senate approved a $287.4 billion defense spending bill Tuesday night after rejecting an effort to eliminate funds for more executive jets for admirals and generals.

The bill pays for Defense Department programs in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. It now must be reconciled with a House-passed version that is about $1 billion more expensive.

On a 65-32 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment by Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that would have stopped the Pentagon from leasing more executive jets for its top brass.

The Pentagon already leases six executive jets and wants $48.6 million for six more, Harkin said. ''There is no justification for additional luxury jets to ferry generals and admirals around from meeting to meeting,'' said Harkin.

But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the leasing program was an attempt to save taxpayers money ''to lease aircraft instead of replacing them,'' as do ''most major businesses.''

The final Pentagon spending bill was then passed, 95-3. Voting no were Sens. Boxer, Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., and Paul Wellstone, D-Minn. Not voting were Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

The Senate also voted 84-14 to restrict the Pentagon's use of powerful pesticides on installations where there are children as the chamber moved toward approval of a $287.4 billion Defense Department spending bill.

Boxer, the amendment's author, said current rules on permissible levels of toxins ''were set to protect essentially 155-pound men.''

Opponents suggested the measure would single out military bases for more stringent requirements than are in place at other federal sites.

Boxer said that the measure would put into law what is already Pentagon policy - and that she was trying to impose the same restrictions throughout the government but that ''so far we have not had much luck moving that larger package.''

The measure would ban in areas where there may be children, such as schools and playgrounds, certain pesticides that contain cancer-containing agents and nerve toxins.

The Senate earlier accepted, by voice vote, a Boxer amendment to safeguard the privacy of military medical records.

Ruled out of order - because it did not involve defense spending directly - was an amendment by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that would ease rules governing high-speed computer exports.

The Senate bill is a $3 billion increase over the Clinton administration request, although about $1 billion less than the version passed last week by the House.

Meanwhile, on a related issue, Rep. Sonny Callahan, D-Ala., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, suggested he may seek to withhold aid to Israel - or at least delay it - to protest Israel's decision to sell advance radar to China.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Monday urged Congress against any such linkage.

Israel is building a plane for China and equipping it with the U.S.-developed PHALCON airborne early warning radar system at a cost of $250 million.

Callahan has suggested that $2.8 billion in aid to Israel be cut by that $250 million.

However, on Tuesday he said that he would propose instead to hold up the early disbursement of Israel's aid money - Israel traditionally gets the money up front, in the first two weeks of each new fiscal year - for the time being.

He said that would ''give the administration time to negotiate what we hope will be an acceptable result.''

But, if no such agreement was reached by time a final version of the foreign aid bill is hammered out by a House-Senate conference committee this summer, ''the hammer is still there and could fall,'' Callahan said in an interview.

He gave the administration a possible way out, saying that if Secretary of Defense William Cohen ''wants to issue a statement saying it's not a threat to our national security, then the issue is over with.''

The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.