New U.S. House Foreign Affairs chairman promises to restore U.S. prestige abroad

The Associated Press

Published: January 5, 2007

WASHINGTON: The new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Friday that the United States has suffered a severe loss in prestige abroad in recent years, and a primary goal of his term will be to restore it.

 Rep. Tom Lantos, chosen to head the committee by his Democratic colleagues after their takeover of the House of Representatives, said in a statement that he will do that by improving international cooperation and "reinstating the United States' role as the lodestar of democratic values and human rights."

 Lantos has been the committee's senior minority member for six years. Even before he officially assumes his new job next week, he announced Friday the restoration of "foreign affairs" to the committee's name rather than the "international relations" instituted during the Republican Party's 12 years in control of the House.

The statement said the committee's early hearings will be "on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the perils of current U.S. policy toward Iran, the looming potential loss of Afghanistan to a resurgent Taliban and a proposed strategy to counteract the nuclear treat posed by North Korea."

Additionally, Lantos said he will add to the committee's agenda ways to ease U.S. dependence on foreign energy. That is legitimate, Lantos said, because "our actions with respect to other countries can be distorted by our dependence upon oil from overseas."

Lantos, a naturalized American who was born a Jew in Budapest, Hungary, and sent to a Nazi labor camp when he was 16. He is the only survivor of the Holocaust ever to have served in Congress.