Development

In yet another sign that the administration and Capitol Hill aren't exactly seeing eye to eye these days, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will mark up the Kerry-Lugar foreign aid reform bill Tuesday, moving the ball forward despite the State Department's desire that Congress hold off until administration reviews are finished.

The Kerry-Lugar bill, one of several foreign-aid reform bills in play, is seen as a strong but relatively modest attempt to increase the power and stature of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). It would, among other things, restore USAID's policy-planning staff and create new oversight and accountability mechanisms to watch over foreign-assistance programs government-wide.

But the State Department leadership has been asking Kerry to slow-walk the bill, not wanting the legislation to preempt State's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), led by Deputy Secretary Jack Lew and Policy Planning chief Anne Marie Slaughter, and to a lesser degree the National Security Council's President Study Directive (PSD) on foreign assistance, led by Gayle Smith.

Apparently, Lew asked Kerry specifically not to mark up the bill. Kerry may have been inclined to go along with Lew's request, but was approached by Lugar, who threatened to pull his support for the bill if Kerry didn't move it through the process. Kerry sided with Lugar and scheduled the markup.

"At the end of the day, the State Department tried to convince Kerry not to markup this legislation. Kerry was somewhat sympathetic but he was going to lose Lugar," said one development expert close to the discussions. "It's important for Kerry to maintain his arm-link with Lugar, so he pushed back."

A committee staffer confirmed the substance of the account, and explained that the committee simply didn't want to wait until the reviews were completed. The PSD is expected perhaps in January but the QDDR won't be completed until summer or fall of 2010 (State has promised to release an interim report at some point).

"What's clear is that [State] wants to wait until the QDDR is done, so in the meantime, is Congress supposed to just remain silent?" the committee staffer asked. "You just can't wait that long to start reforming aid."

Although the long-awaited nomination of Rajiv Shah to be USAID administrator didn't factor into the committee's decision to move the bill (committee staff say the timing was purely based on logistics), they do view his still-undecided role as a barometer of how much Congress will need to weigh in.

If Shah is not given the authority and power within the administration that the bill envisions, or if the reviews don't give USAID the authority the Senate is seeking, Kerry and Lugar could then move the bill further along, over State's objections.

"If they come out with recommendations that don't include a policy mechanism or evaluations, then there would be added momentum to bring this bill to the floor," the staffer said.

The committee plans to markup this bill, then move to confirm Shah, probably in early December.

"We're not looking to take this thing and put into law tomorrow. But we are trying to lay out in an explicit way that this is what we think reform looks like," a different committee staffer said. "State doesn't always see it that way," he added, referring to State's pushback against the bill internally.

Meanwhile, overall confusion over where the administration reviews are going is creating a lot of uncertainty and unease both in Congress and in the development community. State Department officials talk about "elevating" USAID but also talk about "integrating" it into the State Department, words that can be interpreted in a variety of ways.

The Kerry-Lugar idea of restoring USAID's policy-planning staff, which was removed by the Bush administration, is one that lawmakers and development advocates see as crucial.

"An agency without a policy and strategic planning capacity is without true independence," said Noam Unger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "We have an aid system that is weakened by fragmentation and our engagement of foreign countries suffers because of policy incoherence."

Slaughter, in a speech Monday at the Center for American Progress, repeated the cryptic mantra that has the whole development world scratching their heads.

"The overall aim of the QDDR is to integrate and elevate development and diplomacy across the spectrum of the American foreign policy," she said.

"You still need to integrate the power of development professionals, the ideas and the expertise, with the political clout and strategy and reach of diplomacy. That seems to me to be the perfect example of integrated power ...  and that is what Secretary Clinton would like to see as one of her legacies."

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

So often in Washington, the findings of a major commission are released, discussed, and then tossed aside. Not so with the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, whose recommendations are finding their way into legislation this fall.

One of the key recommendations moving in Congress this week is the idea of creating a capability inside the U.S. government to help developing countries find alternatives to nuclear and petroleum-based energy that are environmentally and fiscally sustainable.

Senator Daniel Akaka, D-HI, added a mirror of the Energy Development Program Implementation Act, which requires the State and Energy Departments to create strategic and implementation plans to carry out this effort, to a larger WMD-related bill moving through the committee process now.

"This bill will create an alternative energy Peace Corps, as called for 31 years ago by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978," former senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent, the chairs of the WMD commission, testified before the Senate Homeland Security committee last month, "As our report recommended, this bill would help reduce the further spread of nuclear technologies ostensibly for civilian purposes."

The energy development legislation has widespread support in Congress and the nonproliferation community. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, R-NE, has a companion measure in the House.

"This is an idea whose time has come," said Christopher Paine, director of the nuclear program and the Natural Resources Defense Council, "Environmentally sustainable energy supply should be a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy. This bill just makes good sense."

The overall bill, entitled the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act, is led by committee heads Joseph Lieberman, I-CT, and Susan Collins, R-ME. The markup of that bill continues next week.

The two battling sides in the Honduran crisis have come to an agreement that would allow ousted President Manuel Zelaya to return to office, after a parliamentary vote and with the prior approval of the Supreme Court.

Also included in the deal are terms for a power sharing government, an agreement to respect the results of November 29 elections, and the establishment of a trust commission to weigh in on how the crisis started in the first place.

A U.S. delegation has been in Tagucigalpa since Wednesday, led by Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon, principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig Kelly, and National Security Council Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Dan Restrepo.

Zelaya was deposed June 28 by force and replaced with a de facto regime led by Roberto Micheletti. Zelaya snuck back into Honduras last month and has been hiding out in the Brazilian embassy in Tagucigalpa ever since.

Here are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's congratulatory remarks, delivered while traveling in Pakistan:

I'm very pleased to announce that we've had a breakthrough in negotiations in Honduras.

I want to congratulate the people of Honduras as well as President Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti for reaching an historic agreement. I also congratulate Costa Rican President Oscar Arias for the important role he has played in fashioning the San Jose process and the OAS for its role in facilitating the successful round of talks.

As you know, I sent Assistant Secretary Tom Shannon and his deputy Craig Kelly and the White House NSC representative for the Western Hemisphere Dan Ristreppo to Honduras yesterday after speaking with both President Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti last Friday to urge them finally, once and for all to reach an agreement.

I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue.

This is a big step forward for the Inter-American system and its commitment to democracy as embodied in the Inter-American Democratic Charter. I'm very proud that I was part of the process, that the United States was instrumental in the process. But I'm mostly proud of the people of Honduras who have worked very hard to have this matter resolved peacefully.

We're looking forward to the elections that will be held on November 29, and working with the people and government of Honduras to realize the full return of democracy and a better future for the Honduran people.