WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is looking at easing sanctions on Myanmar, but needs to see more democratic progress including a smooth April by-election before it can start unwinding decades of overlapping economic and political bans on the country, U.S. lawmakers said on Tuesday.

U.S. officials have said they are encouraged by Myanmar’s reforms thus far, which have included the release of hundreds of political prisoners and spurred the European Union and Australia to begin easing their own sanctions.

But the U.S. sanctions, launched in 1988 and expanded by five laws and four presidential directives, could prove tough to unravel quickly as the Obama administration monitors whether Myanmar genuinely embraces democracy, promotes civil liberties and ends strife with ethnic groups.

“We’re looking at it. We’re reviewing right now what’s available to the president, what’s available to Congress, what makes the most sense,” said Democratic Senator John Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I think we have to take some measures in response to what is happening over there. But I don’t think anybody’s yet decided on exactly what the sequencing is,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this month announced Washington would return an ambassador to Myanmar after an absence of two decades, a significant step in the quickening but still tentative re-engagement with the country formerly known as Burma.

RAPID CHANGE

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It was New Year’s Eve when President Barack Obama reluctantly signed into law the legislation he had earlier threatened to veto: a mammoth U.S. defense bill with a multitude of restrictions on the administration’s handling of detainees.

Administration officials had spent weeks trying to rewrite the legislation in Congress. And although Obama signed it into law, he also issued a lengthy, at times indignant, “signing statement” listing the many ways he disagreed with the measure, and suggesting he may even ignore parts of it.

This was the sort of thing that Obama promised he would not do back when he was a candidate for the White House. He told the Boston Globe in 2007 that he would not use presidential signing statements to “nullify or undermine” instructions from Congress enacted into law, declaring that his predecessor George W. Bush had gone too far down that path.

Typically, a U.S. president merely puts his signature on a bill in order to sign it into law. Bush, however, often added “signing statements” to assert, for example, that a particular bill infringed on the constitutional powers of the presidency.

In the past two weeks, Obama has issued two strongly worded signing statements criticizing provisions of new laws. The previous one was two days before Christmas, when the president signed into law a massive bill funding the U.S. government through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30.

“I would say that his most recent signing statements are of the variety common to the Bush presidency, where the president makes some strong constitutional claims” but is vague on what he would do about them, said Christopher Kelley, a professor at Miami University of Ohio who has researched presidential signing statements.

“Obama seems to be saying that he would abide by the law until he was no longer able to abide by the law. That is a hard thing to quantify,” Kelley said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Republican senator on Tuesday questioned President Barack Obama’s commitment to new sanctions on Iran’s central bank, noting the president had claimed the right to sidestep some of the requirements when he signed them into law last week.

In a statement issued as he signed a defense bill into law on Saturday, Obama said several provisions including the sanctions that target Iran’s central bank “would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations.”

The president, a Democrat, said in his statement that if any application of these provisions conflicted with his constitutional authorities, “I will treat the provisions as non-binding.”

Senator Mark Kirk, one of the authors of the new sanctions on Iran, said on Tuesday that Obama was challenging the entire U.S. Senate if he did not implement the new sanctions, because senators approved them unanimously before they were appended to the defense bill.

“With the Senate voting 100-0 to cripple the Central Bank of Iran, the president’s signing statement hinting he will ignore parts of this law risks overwhelming opposition in the Congress,” Kirk, a Republican, said through a spokesman.

The new sanctions would penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank, the main conduit for its oil revenues.

Obama has approved a series of sanctions on Iran and warned that no option is “off the table” in stopping Tehran from its suspected quest for a nuclear weapon.

By Susan Cornwell

(Reuters) – The U.S. State Department and foreign aid budget escaped devastating cuts in a fiscal 2012 spending plan that Congress has approved.

Aid in war zones helped boost the overall amount the United States was willing to commit to foreign assistance in a time of budget scarcity, despite deep cuts advocated by budget hawks in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

But numerous countries still could see a decline or even a halt to U.S. foreign assistance if they do not meet conditions attached to the legislation.

Here are some details of the foreign aid section of the new U.S. spending plan for fiscal 2012, which began October 1. The House of Representatives approved the bill on Friday and the Democratic-run Senate approved it on Saturday.

BASE BUDGET VERSUS WAR-RELATED FOREIGN AID

The legislation provides $42.1 billion in regular funding for the State Department and foreign aid in 2012, which is a cut of more than $6 billion from the 2011 level.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress on Thursday approved a defense bill requiring the military to handle suspected foreign militants allied with al Qaeda, sending it to President Barack Obama for his expected signature into law.

Final action came when the Senate approved the bill in an 86-13 vote, a day after Obama retreated from a veto threat on the legislation. The administration was unhappy with the intrusion into its authority over counterterrorism matters but relented when some of its flexibility was restored.

Other critics complained the measure allowed the indefinite military detention of terrorism suspects, including Americans.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation on Thursday that she said would seek to clarify that indefinite detention could not happen to Americans or anyone apprehended inside the United States.

“I strongly believe U.S. citizens apprehended in the U.S. should never be held in indefinite detention,” Feinstein told the Senate just before the vote.

The House of Representatives agreed to the defense bill on Wednesday. The measure also imposes sanctions against Iran’s central bank and pre-emptively freezes some aid to Pakistan.

The legislation was the latest battle in a long struggle between Obama, a Democrat, and some lawmakers over whether terror suspects should be prosecuted as “enemy combatants” before military commissions and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or treated as criminal suspects in the U.S. court and prison system.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress would allow American economic aid to the Palestinians to continue next year so long as Palestine is not admitted as a state to any more United Nations organizations, under a proposal released on Thursday.

The measure pending before lawmakers would appear to give the Palestinians a pass on the U.N. organization they have already joined — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural Organization (UNESCO).

It also says that the Palestinian mission in Washington can remain open so long as Palestine is not admitted to a single additional United Nations entity.

The proposed spending plan was released by congressional Republicans, who say it was agreed between Republican and Democratic appropriators as a spending plan for fiscal 2012. Their agreement has until now been kept secret.

It was unclear how soon a vote would be held, or whether details of the plan would change. Republicans are pushing for a vote as soon as possible.

The plan does not specify any particular amount of aid for the Palestinians for fiscal 2012, apparently leaving it to the Obama administration to set the level in consultation with Congress.

“The bottom line is that U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority can continue, which is good news,” said Dylan Williams, director of government affairs at J Street, a liberal advocacy group in Washington that says a two-state solution is essential to Israel’s survival.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Wednesday that would expand sanctions on Iran, cracking down on a wider range of energy issues and closing some loopholes in existing energy and financial sanctions.

Some senators in both parties are also working on legislation to tighten sanctions on Iran, the world’s fifth biggest oil exporter, because of concerns it is developing a nuclear bomb.

In a 410-11 vote, the House passed a bill that would expand sanctions on companies involved in the oil industry, including on investments, selling Iran goods or services used in refineries, or providing Iran with refined products worth $5 million or more in a year.

The bill, sponsored by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, would also place sanctions on developing infrastructure or ports, or buying Iranian sovereign debt.

Separately, the House passed a defense bill 283-136 including a provision that would impose sanctions on foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank. That measure is expected to pass the Senate and be signed into law.

The House passed another bill by Ros-Lehtinen, 410-11 to target sanctions on countries or companies that help Iran, North Korea or Syria pursue nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or develop missile programs.

Under this bill, even entities selling conventional military goods or technology to those three countries could have their assets frozen in the United States.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a defense bill requiring the military to handle suspected militants allied with al Qaeda, acting not long after President Barack Obama removed a veto threat from the controversial legislation.

The bill was expected to pass the Senate this week and then go to President Obama’s desk for his signature into law. Shortly before the House vote, the White House announced the president’s advisers would not recommend a veto, although they still had concerns about the measure.

The bill, which passed on a vote of 283 to 136, also imposes new sanctions against Iran’s central bank and pre-emptively freezes some aid to Pakistan.

In recent weeks members of Obama’s national security team had expressed opposition to the section that broadens the armed forces’ powers over suspected militants by requiring that foreigners allied with al Qaeda be held in military custody even if they are captured in the United States.

But the White House statement on Wednesday said lawmakers had made “several important changes” in the last few days.

“While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counterterrorism professionals, the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength,” the White House statement said.

“If in the process of implementing this law we determine that it will negatively impact our counterterrorism professionals and undercut our commitment to the rule of law, we expect that the authors of these provisions will work quickly and tirelessly to correct these problems,” it added.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Strains between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s disputed parliamentary elections are threatening U.S. President Barack Obama’s “reset” policy, and tensions could escalate further under the glare of coming presidential votes in both countries.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s attack on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for questioning the validity of Sunday’s elections signaled a possible endpoint in the warming trend that Obama’s aides have hailed as one of his signature foreign policy achievements.

With Obama seeking reelection in November and Putin widely expected to reclaim Russia’s presidency in March, the political season is likely to be marked by a hardened tone between former the Cold War foes, analysts say.

A stronger U.S. line could help Obama counter Republican charges that his Russia policy amounts to appeasement and also give him a boost with fellow Democrats who want a more assertive approach on human rights.

Putin, a former KGB spymaster, may hope his tough talk will divert attention from his emerging domestic political problems and also appeal to voters’ nationalist instincts.

“We’re at an inflection point after a period of reconciliation, and it could go badly from here,” said Matthew Rojansky, a Washington-based Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The latest shift comes in the wake of a serious election setback for Putin’s ruling party. Political opponents, who say United Russia would have done even worse if not for widespread fraud at the ballot box, responded with protests.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Strains between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s disputed parliamentary elections are threatening U.S. President Barack Obama’s “reset” policy, and tensions could escalate further under the glare of coming presidential votes in both countries.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s attack on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for questioning the validity of Sunday’s elections signaled a possible endpoint in the warming trend that Obama’s aides have hailed as one of his signature foreign policy achievements.

With Obama seeking reelection in November and Putin widely expected to reclaim Russia’s presidency in March, the political season is likely to be marked by a hardened tone between former the Cold War foes, analysts say.

A stronger U.S. line could help Obama counter Republican charges that his Russia policy amounts to appeasement and also give him a boost with fellow Democrats who want a more assertive approach on human rights.

Putin, a former KGB spymaster, may hope his tough talk will divert attention from his emerging domestic political problems and also appeal to voters’ nationalist instincts.

“We’re at an inflection point after a period of reconciliation, and it could go badly from here,” said Matthew Rojansky, a Washington-based Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The latest shift comes in the wake of a serious election setback for Putin’s ruling party. Political opponents, who say United Russia would have done even worse if not for widespread fraud at the ballot box, responded with protests