HOUSE VOTES TO END BAN ON AID TO ANGOLA REBELS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706040004-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: July 11, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-
Y
LRTICL>i JAPEAM
9 PAGE ?
WASHINGTON POST
11 July 1985
House votes to End Ban on Aid to
Angola Rebels
By Margaret Shapiro
Waahrngton Poet staff writer
The Democratic-controlled
House voted yesterday to end a
decade-old prohibition on U.S. mil-
itary assistance to guerrillas fight-
ing the Marxist government of An-
gola.
The Senate took similar action
last month.
As recently as 1981 the House
opposed repealing the ban, known
as the Clark amendment, and open-
ing the door to possible new U.S.
involvement in Angola. However,
lawmakers now appear to be in a
more hard-line mood regarding de-
fense and foreign-policy issues and
more eager to assist anticommunist
insurgency groups around the
world.
Earlier this week the House
voted overwhelmingly to provide
overt assistance for the first time to
noncommunist groups fighting Viet-
namese troops in Cambodia. And
last month the House reversed it-
self and agreed to provide aid to
counterrevolutionaries fighting the
leftist government in Nicaragua.
Yesterday's vote on Angola was
236 to 185, with 176 Republicans
and 60 Democrats voting in favor of
lifting the ban on aid, and six Re-
publicans and 179 Democrats op-
posed. The amendment, sponsored
by Rep. Samuel S. Stratton (D-
N.Y.) and attached to the 1986 for-
eign-aid bill, does not provide mil-
itary aid to any group; but gives the
Reagan administration the author-
ity to request it.
The Clark amendment, named af-
ter former senator Dick Clark
.Iowa), has been in place since 19W.
The Senate voted to repeal it in
1981, but the House balked.
The amendment was adopted
after the Vietnam war in LeRM
to revelations that the Central
In-
telligence Agency had provided co-
vert militar aid to pro-western
Qrouos i? tins Marxist nationalist
forces during 1975 and 1976 in the
midst of a civil warm n o a.
The administration favored re-
peal of the amendment but White
House officials have said there are
no immediate plans to request mil-
itary or other aid for the pro-west-
ern National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA),
led by Jonas Savimbi, which contin-
ues to fight Angola's Cuban-backed
government.
The United States has no diplo-
matic relations with Angola but has
been seeking its cooperation for a
peace plan that would couple the
withdrawal of 25,000 to 30,000
Cuban troops from Angola with in-
dependence for its neighbor, the
South African-administered terri-
tory of Namibia.
Talks to accomplish this stalled in
May when South Africa launched a
commando raid on a Gulf Oil facility
in Angola.
Lawmakers favoring repeal of the
Clark amendment said yesterday
that the legislation is out of date
now that Congress is willing to pro-
vide aid to other anticommunist
insurgency groups and that a peace-
ful settlement in southern Africa is
not possible so long as Cuban forces
remain in Angola.
"As long as those Cubans stay in
Angola there will never be any
peace there" and the Angolan peo-
ple will "never be able to remove
the yoke of communism," Stratton
said. "We are providing help to
those who are fighting the forces of
communism in every area of the
world ... even Cambodia," so why
not Angola, he asked.
Opponents argued that repealing
the amendment would hurt the
peace process at a time when the
Cubans have indicated that they
have a timetable for withdrawing
their troops, and would further
align the United States with the
repressive South African regime.
Rep. Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.) said
that repeal would show that "our
obsession with communism is such
that we will do anything and every-
thing, even if it hurts the people we
want to help."
Earlier yesterday, the House
voted to deny federal aid to private
international organizations that per-
form or actively promote abortion
as a family-planning method. It also
adopted an amendment accusing
China of "crimes against humanity"
because of the coerced abortion and
sterilization aspects of its of its pop-
ulation-control practices.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706040004-4