U.S. boosts anti-terror aid to Asia allies

WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. government has dramatically boosted anti-terror aid to major Asian allies in recent years, a new report says.

The Center for Public Integrity in a statement Thursday said its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists documented what it called a "staggering amount of U.S. military aid to Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Uzbekistan in the three years following Sept. 11, 2001."

During that time period, "U.S. military aid to Pakistan rose 45,000 percent, from $9 million to more than $4 billion; in the Philippines, similar aid increased 1,500 percent, from $14.6 million to more than $245 million; military assistance from the United States to Uzbekistan increased nearly 1,000 percent, from $9 million to nearly $100 million," the CPI said.

"These record amounts have not only been given to regimes with documented histories of human rights abuses, but American taxpayers have little way of monitoring how this money was spent," it said.

"The governments of Uzbekistan and Pakistan have seemingly used the U.S.-led war on terror to legitimize domestic crackdowns against their own citizens, at times arbitrarily detaining and arresting terrorist suspects and allegedly participating in the CIA's controversial 'extraordinary renditions' program -- transferring terrorist suspects to a foreign country for interrogation without any legal proceedings," the report said.

The CPI accused the U.S. government of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in these nations as long as their governments were ready to cooperate broadly in the war on terror.