Pentagon wants $127 bln more for Iraq, Afghanistan: US senator

[ECH1969]

The Pentagon plans to ask Congress for an additional 127 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007, a top Senate Democrat's office said Friday.

The funding request would be in addition to the 70 billion dollars already written into the 2007 budget for US military operations there.

Senator Kent Conrad, the incoming head of the Senate budget committee, "heard from very reliable Republican sources that the next supplemental (budget request) would be 127 billion dollars and rising," his spokesman Chris Thorne told a French news agency.

Thorne confirmed the information originally reported by USA Today on Friday. The daily also cited Democratic Representative Jim Cooper as saying the Pentagon would seek as much as 160 billion dollars.

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