U.S. House approves the national defense bill

The U.S. House on Thursday night passed its sweeping annual defense policy bill that would implement major foreign policy actions, including on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

The legislation, which authorizes spending levels and sets Pentagon policy, would require a report identifying units of national security forces of foreign countries that "have been determined to have

committed gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including as described in the annual Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," per an amendment offered by Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey.

"This amendment is an important step in creating oversight for the Defense Department’s Section 333 Building Partner Capacity Program that has sent enormous sums of money to human rights abusing regimes and dictators, including that of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, which has numerous documented human rights violations." - Pallone said in a statement.

"The [Defence] Department has spent almost four billion dollars over the last four years on Section 333. Even though the State Department has singled out Azerbaijani border units for committing human rights violations, Azerbaijani border forces received over $100 million in security assistance in fiscal years 2018 and 2019 through the program," he noted.

The bill also aims to extract information from the Biden administration on a detailed review of all United States humanitarian and developmental assistance programs being implemented in Nagorno-Karabakh, including project descriptions and budgets, A listing of partnering organizations, and resulting deliverables, according to an amendment authored by Democrat Congressman David Valadao of California.

Overall, the bill tackles major issues such as curbing INTERPOL abuse, mandating country-by-country corruption reporting, enhancing Magnitsky sanctions, banning kleptocrats from USA publicly, revealing recovered assets, imposing sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, etc.

Another important amendment requires an annual report on foreign companies proliferating hacking and digital surveillance tools to repressive governments – empowering Congressional action and oversight on this growing threat to human rights and democracy worldwide,

On Russia, the bill requires the U.S. Administration to review for possible sanction the “Navalny 35” list of kleptocrats and officials that enable Putin’s human rights abuse, pay-offs, and shadow wars.

The Senate is yet to pass its own version of the defense bill, albeit the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a version in July.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.