By Katharine Q. Seelye

N.Y. Times News Service

June 8, 1995

[Buried in the middle of this article is an important

reference to Tibet and China.]

WASHINGTON - The House defied the Clinton administration. Thursday and approved a sweeping foreign aid bill that includes an amendment, passed easily, to end U.S. participation in the arms embargo against Bosnia.

The provision to lift the arms embargo gives President Clinton one more reason to veto the entire foreign aid package, a step he has threatened to take if it reaches his desk. It must first clear the Senate, which is considering a similar bill in committee now and will most likely act separately on the arms embargo in the days ahead.

Debate on the arms embargo amendment, approved on a vote of 318 to 99, overshadowed the larger bill, even though this was the first chance for House Republicans to structure a foreign aid package since the Marshall Plan.

Refusal to lift the embargo, Rep. David E. Bonior of Michigan, the House Democratic whip, argued made Americans ``unwitting accomplices in mass genocide.''

As cease-fires have come and gone, he said, ``the one constant is the absolute unwillingness of the West to take meaningful steps to stop the slaughter,'' all the while raising hopes ``the cavalry is coming.''

Arguing most vociferously against lifting the embargo was Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who is one of the most respected foreign policy experts in the House. He warned doing so would inevitably draw 25,000 American troops into ``the hottest war in the world today'' and cost more than $1 billion and a vote in favor could only be construed ``as a vote to intensify the war.''

Reflecting a growing frustration over the crisis in Bosnia, the vote was solid enough to allow the House to override a presidential veto, unlike the vote on which the House last year passed a similar measure, 244 to 178.

But the new measure does not stand alone and so wil certainly doom the overall foreign aid bill, which passed by only 222 to 192 and which Clinton has already threatened to veto as ``isolationist'' and a ``frontal assault''on presidential authority.

The bill would slash overseas spending by $3 billion over two years, meld three independent agencies into the State Department and apply foreign aid in ways that attempt to advance American interests around the world, withholding money to Russia until the conflict in Chechnya is resolved.

In all, the foreign aid bill would allocate $16.5 billion for 1996 and $15.3 billion for 1997. The current level is $17.4 billion. The administration requested $18.2 billion for 1996.

``This bill charts a new and positive direction for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy,'' said Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, the New York Republican who is chairman of the International Relations Committee and who steered the package through the House. ``It scrapes away 50 years' worth of barnacles and cobwebs accumulated during the cold war.''

The bill, the American Overseas Interests Act, passed with just 12 Democrats joining 210 Republicans in support and 16 Republicans joining 175 Democrats and one independent in opposing it. The Republicans who voted against their party were a combination of moderates and conservatives who could never bring themselves to vote for any foreign aid.

Most Democrats who oppose the bill said its cuts in aid were too severe, particularly for Africa, and made too big a claim on presidential prerogatives. Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who sponsored the amendment to lift the arms embargo, so detested the overall bill he voted against it even though it included that very amendment.

Several other Democrats voted similarly, prompting Republicans to charge they did not really care about lifting the embargo. Hoyer said he thought it important for the House to reiterate its support for lifting the embargo and the vote had been lopsided enough to encourage him to introduce a free-standing bill on the matter, perhaps as soon as next week.

The bill, which was freighted down with 100 amendments 43 of which were approved, 6 of which were rejected and 51 of which were never considered because the House ran out of time would reach into all corners of the globe, in ways big and small.

For example, in one of the rare instances of maintaining current financing, it would continue to provide $3 billion in aid to Israel. Despite intense lobbying for the bill by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, virtually every Jewish Democrat voted against it, protesting in part the cuts to other countries.

Among the cuts is a halt to the $4 million in aid the United States now sends to Mauritania until that Arab-ruled West African nation eliminates slavery. State Department reports say Mauritania holds at least 90,000 blacks as slaves.

The bill would also require the United States to recognize Tibet as an independent state and establish a special envoy for Tibet within the State Department, pressuring China to admit Tibetan representatives to the upcoming World Conference on Women in Beijing. And it would authorize the United States to provide military aid necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability, reversing past executive decisions committed to gradually reducing military aid to Taiwan.

But one part of the bill that generated intense debate was a domestic subject, its provision to abolish three independent agencies: the Agency for International Development, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the U.S. Information Agency.

This ``restructuring,'' as the Republicans called it, would achieve a longtime Republican goal of shrinking the foreign-affairs bureaucracy, particularly of these agencies, which all grew out of the cold war to combat communism.

The administration tried to head this off, but Republicans, led in the Senate by Jesse Helms of North Carolina, made elimination of the agencies a symbol of their efforts to streamline the bureaucracy.

``Every freshman voted for the bill today, and they did so because it cut the agencies,'' said a top Republican aide. He said the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, had told them, ``If you want to downsize government, this is your opportunity.''