Marines plan approved

Press, 30 September 1983, Page 6

Marines plan approved

NZPA-Reuter Washington The House of Representatives has approved a compromise plan to keep Marines in Lebanon for up to 18 months and the Senate was expected to follow suit. The House approved the compromise 270-161 in a decisive win for President Ronald Reagan and congressional leaders who devised it to resolve a Constitutional wrangle between the White House and Congress over who has the power to commit American troops in hostile areas abroad.

The compromise centres on the War Powers Act, 1973, which bars a President from keeping American troops in hostile areas overseas more than 90 days

without Congressional approval.

Mr Reagan, like his predecessors, has resisted invoking the law, asserting that it impinges on his Presidential prerogatives. Under the compromise Congress, instead of Mr Reagan, would declare the law in force and authorise the Marines to stay in Beirut until early 1985, after the United States Presidential elections next year. The House Speaker, Mr Thomas O’Neill, who negotiated the deal with the White House, insisted that it would not leave Mr Reagan unfettered but would “establish unprecedented restraints on the deployment and mission of United States armed forces overseas.”