WASHINGTON, Feb 5, 2007 (AFP) - US foreign aid will rise 12 percent to 20.3 billion dollars under the new budget unveiled Monday by President George W. Bush, with efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan key beneficiaries of the increase, officials said.
The US contribution to the global fight against HIV/AIDS will also more than double in fiscal 2008 beginning in October to 4.2 billion dollars, from an estimated 1.85 billion dollars this year.
Randall Tobias, the State Department's director of foreign assistance, said the planned increase in aid is an integral part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism and international instability.
"This reflects the critical role that our security and development assistance play in our national security strategy," he said.
"There is no doubt that foreign assistance makes the United States safer," he told reporters.
While Israel remains the single biggest recipient of US aid with 2.4 billion dollars budgeted for fiscal 2008, Iraq comes second with an estimated 1.8 billion dollars to fund economic and infrastructure development and help build up government institutions, according to State Department documents.
Egypt, traditionally the second biggest US aid recipient after Israel, is third with 1.72 billion dollars followed by Afghanistan with 1.067 billion.
The monies going to Israel and Egypt fell slightly since fiscal 2006 -- the last year for which comparable figures are available -- as foreseen under the terms of US-brokered peace accords.
But the Afghan aid represents an increase of 98 million dollars and will be supplemented by a massive 10.6 billion dollar initiative announced last month to bolster the beleagured government of President Hamid Karzai in its battle with resurgent Taliban militia.
Much of that money will fall under a 2007 suplemental budget request Bush is due to present to Congress in the coming weeks, officials said.
Pakistan, which Washington is pressing to take tougher action against Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements harboring along its border with Afghanistan, will see its aid rise from 707 million dollars in 2006 to 785 million dollars.
Sudan is also tipped to see its assistance jump from 499 million dollars to 673 million, despite bilateral tensions caused by the Khartoum government's reluctance to allow UN-led peacekeepers into its war-torn Darfur region.
Tobias said the aid would primarily fund humanitarian relief efforts, including in Darfur where some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been displaced in a four-year-old civil war.
Some of the money could also be used to fund the deployment of around 20,000 peacekeepers which Sudan has agreed, in principle, to allow into Darfur, officials said.
Other countries set to receive a boost in aid include Indonesia, with an 18 percent increase to 158 million dollars, and Kosovo, the Serbian province in line to obtain quasi-independence under a UN plan unveiled last week, which will see its assistance soar 95 percent to 151 million dollars, Tobias said.
Other country figures were not immediately available, though Tobias said total aid proposed for Africa would increase by 54 percent, representing a quadrupling of US assistance to the continent since Bush became president in 2001.
The budget forsees a six percent increase in aid to south and central Asia and a four percent lift in assistance to the Middle East, he said.
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