Rise In Aid Sought

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31590, 30 January 1968, Page 15

Rise In Aid Sought

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright) WASHINGTON, Jan. 29. President Johnson today called for a significant increase in United States foreign aid aimed at helping specially those countries “willing to help themselves.”

Undeterred by congressional opponents who slashed the last aid programme to its lowest level in 20 years, the President asked for a rise of nearly $750 million in spending power in the 1968-69 fiscal year starting next July. Administration officials said they faced a tough fight in seeking appropriations from Congress to help more than 70 nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with benefits ranging from contraceptives, to curb runaway population growth, to guns and planes for self-defence. Mr Johnson, submitting his Budget to Congress, asked for $2,500 million in economic aid and $540 million in military assistance. This compares with an aid request of $3,226 million last year, slashed almost one-third by Congress to a total appropriation of only $2,295 million for economic and milii tary aid.

Mr William S. Gaud, administrator of the Agency for International Development (A.1.D.) told a press conference the final outcome, likely to take months of debate and backstage compromises, remained a “serious” open question. Mr Gaud said: “We believe this to be a tight budget. We think we need every cent of it to do the job we have been given to do.” In his Budget message to Congress, President Johnson said the aid programme, started in 1948, must be continued “because we do not wish our children to inherit a world in which two-thirds of the people are underfed, diseased and poorly educated.” The aid bill was the small-

est ever submitted by a President to Congress. The peak was in 1952, when President Truman asked for $8,500 million. Mr Johnson said the United States “will continue to direct our economic assistance to those countries willing to help themselves.”