Reid POW amendment stripped from spending bill

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2003 | 9:36 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid's amendment to help former prisoners of war receive payment from the former Iraqi government was stripped from the final version of the omnibus spending bill, an aide said Monday.

Last month, the Senate approved Reid's amendment to the Veterans Affairs spending bill. The amendment said Congress wanted the White House to allow Las Vegas resident Jeffrey Tice and 16 other former POWs from the first Gulf War to collect $959 million won in a lawsuit filed against Iraq for pain caused by torture during their imprisonment.

The VA spending bill, along with six other spending bills, was rolled into one large piece of legislation. The House approved the bill Monday and the Senate was expected to take it up today. It is unclear if there will be a vote on the bill or if it will be moved to January.

Tice and the other POWs won the $959 million judgment after they sued the Iraqi government for pain caused by torture during their imprisonment. They were supposed to collect the money from Iraq's assets but the White House froze the assets once the war began and is now using them to rebuild Iraq.

The Senate first approved the amendment Oct. 15 during debate on President Bush's $87 billion spending bill to fund the war and reconstruction efforts in Iraq, but the State Department sent a letter to House and Senate negotiators on the Iraq bill urging them to strip the relevant language. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage wrote that the Reid amendment was "inconsistent with our national objective regarding Iraq."

The House has a similar "sense of the Congress" resolution pending. Its sponsors, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said Monday that they will continue to work on the matter next year. The House adjourned for the year on Monday.