Washington is aiming to be even-handed when selling arms to Israel and Arab states. But not everybody in Congress is happy with the administration’s plans

The USA set an aggressive tone for future arms sales in the region in July with the unveiling of a 10-year arms proposal worth more than $63 billion in sales and grants.

The proposal balances the delicately bi-polar nature of US interests in the region with funds distributed roughly evenly between Israel and the Arab states. Israel would have access to $30 billion to buy US-made weapons over the next decade, while Egypt would be the beneficiary of another $13 billion in direct aid.

Most reports have described the remainder as a $20 billion arms sales package for Saudi Arabia, but the public language of Bush administration officials has been more opaque.

Significantly, the arms package for the Arab states except Egypt involve sales only rather than grants or direct aid. The non-Egyptia

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.