U.S. Rep. Larry Smith (D-Fla.) will introduce a joint resolution in the House of Representatives next week to try to block the Reagan administration’s proposed $1.9 billion arms sale to Kuwait, congressional sources said Thursday.
It was unclear Thursday who might introduce a companion bill in the Senate.
President Reagan’s national security adviser, Lt. Col. Colin Powell, met Thursday afternoon with lawmakers at the White House to discuss the sale, said Jamie Ridge, assistant press secretary to Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.), one of the senators in attendance.
Other congressional sources said Powell met separately with House members, including Smith, Rep. Mel Levine (D-Calif.) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.).
The meetings came a few hours after the Reagan administration formally notified Congress of the proposed sale. It includes 40 F/A-18 fighter planes, 300 Maverick missiles, 200 Sparrow missiles, 120 Sidewinder missiles, 40 Harpoon missiles, 400 laser-guided bombs and 200 cluster bombs.
Smith had sent a letter signed by 67 members of the House of Representatives to Secretary of State George Shultz on June 21 urging him not to formally propose the package. Twenty senators signed a similar letter to Shultz, initiated by Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.).
30 DAYS TO BLOCK SALE
Both houses of Congress now have 30 days to block the sale. It will automatically go through unless they specifically vote to cancel it.
In an attempt to avoid such a move, senior administration officials assured two House Foreign Affairs subcommittees Thursday that the weapons would not have the capability to reach Israel.
Edward Gnehm, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, warned that if the sale fell through, the Kuwaitis would consider purchasing Toronado fighter planes from Great Britain, which have a range of 650 miles that Gnehm said would “cover part of Israel.”
“This is again one of the reasons why we have argued strenuously that our sale of an F-18 meets some of the considerations of the committee members when it comes to a threat to the State of Israel,” Gnehm said. Saudi Arabia in 1986 purchased 72 Toronados from the British.
Rep. Dante Fascell (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that the fact that “somebody else is willing to sell… does not mean that the United States should be involved in adding to, as a matter of policy, the arms race in a situation where war has been going on for 40 years.”
Peter Burleigh, deputy assistant secretary of state for the region, later confirmed that an unnamed U.S. ally or allies are considering a major sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. He said it would be announced within a few days, but refused to name the source country or the amount of weapons involved.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
