The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation Tuesday that would take a new approach to the U.S. aid relationship with Pakistan.

The move echoes a growing chorus calling for refocusing the war on terrorism on Afghanistan and Pakistan - although other voices say the way forward there remains difficult.

The bill (S 3263), approved by voice vote, would triple non-security aid to Pakistan, authorizing more than $7 billion during the next five years while tightening conditions on funding for the country's military.

Supporters, including the government in Islamabad, hailed the emphasis on non-military aid.

"Today's action by the committee heralds a new day in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Pakistan, a relationship that will be founded on mutual interest and mutual values, an economic partnership that transcends political and military relations and directly impacts the life of the people of Pakistan," said Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani.

However, experts cautioned against excessive optimism. In a new report, Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies criticized U.S. and multilateral efforts to analyze security problems and other issues facing Pakistan and Afghanistan more than six years into the war on terrorism.

"These problems are compounded by the lack of a meaningful joint campaign plan both at the national and institutional level," Cordesman wrote.

The legislation moved forward while Pakistan's new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, was visiting Washington. He is scheduled to meet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other congressional leaders, as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Wednesday.

Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a cosponsor of the bill, met Gillani on Tuesday in what Obama, a senator from Illinois, called a "productive and wide-ranging discussion."

Gillani met with President Bush on July 28, and the two leaders issued a joint statement that offered implied praise for the aid bill's approach.
Combating Terrorism

The United States seeks help from Pakistan's new government, elected in February, to crack down on terrorist training and safe havens near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, where the government has little control.

"The larger outcome of the war on terrorism as we know it is going to be defined in large measure by what we're able to do to quell the radical extremism that is flourishing there," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "This is really a down payment, in my judgment," he added, referring to the bill.

The bill, sponsored by Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., would authorize $7.5 billion in non-military aid through fiscal 2013. It would not specify amounts of military aid, but it would require the secretary of State to certify that Pakistan is "making concerted efforts" to combat al Qaeda and the Taliban. The State Department could waive the requirement for national security reasons.

To keep a tighter rein on the development spending, the bill would require an annual report to Congress, including a list of every entity that got more than $25,000.

It would direct the secretary of State to develop a comprehensive strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, something that an Government Accountability Office report in April found absent.

The funds that the bill authorizes would dwarf the amount of aid currently slated for fiscal 2009. The Senate's fiscal 2009 State-Foreign Operations bill (S 3288) would provide $425 million, less than a third of the $1.5 billion the bill would authorize for fiscal 2009. The draft House version would provide $685 million for economic and health assistance programs.

In separate action Tuesday, Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., and Nita M. Lowey, D-N.Y., who chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Appropriations State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee, respectively, said they would add their names to a Senate hold on a proposed reallocation of $227 million from various Pakistani military programs to upgrades of its F-16 fighters.

They also called for $200 million in economic aid to Pakistan to address what they called the country's "budgetary crisis."