U.S. Congress urged to pass emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel: White House

US envoys in nine countries urge Congress to pass National Security Supplemental Funding for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Indo-Pacific.

American envoys in nine countries, including India and Japan, wrote to the Congress on Tuesday, February 6, 2024, urging it to act quickly to pass the President's National Security Supplemental Funding request, including the aid it contains for Ukraine,Israel and the Indo-Pacific, the White House said.

John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House, told reporters that nine US ambassadors to countries across the Indo-Pacific have sent the letter.

"The ambassadors wrote about how... 'many countries in the Indo-Pacific are intently focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East'," Mr. Kirby said quoting from the letter.

The ambassadors signing the letter included Philip Goldberg of South Korea, Rahm Emanuel of Japan, Caroline Kennedy of Australia, MaryKay Carlson of the Philippines, Eric Garcetti of India, Nicholas Burns of China, Tom Udall of New Zealand, Edgard Kagan of Malaysia and Marc Knapper of Vietnam.

"Governments are watching what we do at this pivotal moment in history — a time when decisions that we take now will have lasting impacts for years to come. They want to see that when the chips are down, the United States will be there for our allies and partners," said the letter written by the nine US envoys.

"The letter is somewhat unusual for a diplomatic corps that is usually reluctant to engage in such fights publicly. But the ambassadors, who met recently at a regional conference, said that the importance of the aid and the signals that failure would send warranted the appeal," New York Times reported.

"We were in contact with ambassadors …- although they wrote the letter themselves, we have been in contact with those ambassadors," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference.