By Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bushratcheted up pressure on Congress on Thursday to pass new rulesfor his domestic spying program before it expires this weekend,saying he was prepared to delay a trip to Africa to helpadvance the measure.
"If we have to delay, we'll delay," Bush said in his latestmanoeuvre to prod lawmakers to favour a new law granting legalimmunity to telephone companies that cooperated in hiswarrantless eavesdropping program.
"There really is no excuse for letting this criticallegislation expire," he said.
Bush urged the House of Representatives to pass a WhiteHouse-backed bill approved by the Senate on Tuesday, saying afailure to act would jeopardize national security byundermining intelligence agencies' ability to monitorcommunications between terrorism suspects.
Democrats, however, accused Bush of fear-mongering as heand his fellow Republicans seem intent on using the spyingdebate to score points in a presidential election year bypainting the Democrats as weak on counterterrorism.
The current legislation expires on Saturday. Bush has vowedto veto any further temporary extensions and is demanding along-term fix to solidify the government's expanded powers toconduct domestic surveillance without court orders.
Bush was due to fly to Africa on Friday. He said he wasprepared to delay his departure "if it will help them completetheir work on this critical bill."
'PROTECT THE NATION'
Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell toldthe Senate Intelligence Committee that if the law expires "itwill do grave damage to our capabilities to protect thenation."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, wroteBush a letter accusing him of a "reckless attempt tomanufacture a crisis."
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat,said the president's comments "implying that any one of us isless focused on the security of our nation were wrong, divisiveand harmful."
The House Democrats' chief objection to the Senate bill isthat it would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunicationscompanies that cooperated with the program and could now facepotentially billions of dollars in civil damages.
About 40 civil lawsuits have been filed accusing AT&T Inc.,Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. ofviolating Americans' privacy rights by helping the warrantlessdomestic spying program that Bush authorized shortly after thehijacked airliner attacks in 2001.
Senior Democrats said they planned to explore possiblesolutions to the stalemate as early as Friday.
Hoyer said, however, there was no urgency in passing a newbill without proper review and that even if the current lawexpired, operations approved under it could continue for a yearand others could be approved with a court order.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requiresthat the government receive the approval of a secret FISA courtto conduct surveillance in the United States of suspectedforeign enemy targets.
But after the September 11 attacks, Bush authorizedwarrantless surveillance of contacts between people in theUnited States and others overseas if one had suspected ties toterrorists.
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, Jeremy Pelofsky,Thomas Ferraro and Randall Mikkelsen; editing by MohammadZargham)
