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Africa Policy E-Journalgiven the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files. However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research. Africa: Rethinking U.S. Aid to the Middle East Date Distributed (ymd): 950216 Announcement posted 2/16/95 On January 31st, representatives of non-governmental organizations concerned with promoting peace and development in the Middle East released a proposal to stimulate dialogue among U.S. policymakers and the public about the most effective use of U.S. assistance to the region. They suggest that a virtual entitlement for Egypt and Israel serves neither the best interests of the region nor those of the United States. Acknowledging the vital importance of security to all the countries in the region, the report takes as a starting point the need for reconfigured aid to support durable peace and stability. It views the continued high levels of military aid and escalating arms sales as destabilizing and suggests that arms reduction agreements, curbs on arms sales, and a phase-down of military aid are essential. It also suggests that turbulence and extremism are likely to continue until development initiatives are undertaken to respond to the needs of the many marginalized people in the region and until opportunities for political participation are opened to them. Since such a high proportion of U.S. aid has been earmarked for military aid to Egypt and Israel, with these allocations virtually unquestioned in the political mainstream, the fact that such issues are being raised is relevant to groups concerned with budget allocations to development, and to African development in particular. Although the proposal "does not anticipate an immediate, complete restructuring of assistance to the region but rather a gradual phase-in of changes over a period of time as the peace process progresses and as conscious- ness of the advantages of working together as a region increases within and among countries," it would "result over time in the reduction of overall levels of assistance for Egypt and Israel, as well as the rejection of recent calls for increased military aid to Jordan." The document is entitled "Toward a Safer Future for the Children of Abraham: Proposal for Restructuring U.S. Aid to the Middle East" and is available from the Coalition to Rethink U.S. Aid to the Middle East. Organizations with representatives in the study group which prepared the proposal include Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (Office for Governmental Affairs), Church World Service/Lutheran World Relief (Office on Development Policy), World Vision, American Near East Refugee Aid, CARE (Washington Office), Friends Committee on National Legislation, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (Washington Office), Project on Demilitarization and Democracy, Bread for the World,National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and Churches for Middle East Peace. To receive a hard copy of the proposal contact the Office on Development Policy, Church World Service/Lutheran World Relief, 110 Maryland Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002, tel. (202) 543-6336, fax (202) 546-6232. For either a hard copy or an electronic version send an email request to: Mark_Brown.parti@ecunet.org or mknolldc@igc.org.
Documents previously distributed in the e-journal are
available on the Africa Action website: To be added to or dropped from the e-journal subscription list, write to e-journal@africaaction.org. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the source mentioned in the posting.
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Africa Policy E-Journal
