United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

US senators declined on Thursday to block the sale of F-16s to Turkey, despite voicing deep disdain for Turkey's conduct as an ally. They were upholding an unofficial bargain that Turks would get the fighter jets if they stopped blocking Sweden's accession to NATO.

"A deal's a deal," said Idaho Senator Jim Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

A Republican Senator for Kentucky, Rand Paul, has submitted a joint resolution opposing the proposed sale of military equipment to Turkey on Monday.

Paul, a member of the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations, has clashed with President Joe Biden's administration over the sale of 40 F-16s and a variety of other military equipment to Turkey.

US Senator Bob Menendez said on Wednesday he still had concerns about the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, and had not changed his hold on the sale of the aircraft.

There is "nothing new," Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters at the Capitol. "We continue to raise our concerns."

US Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, has approved the sale of Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jets to Greece, adding the last signature needed before the deal can go through, Hellas Journal reported on Thursday.

Legislation was introduced in the US Senate and US House of Representatives commemorating the 202nd anniversary of Greece's independence and celebrating democracy in Greece and the US.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Oct. 19 approved the nomination of former Senator Jeff Flake as U.S. ambassador to Turkey. 

The committee voted to approve 33 nomimees for the State Department, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other critical foreign policy nominations.

US Senator Bob Menendez's return to the chairmanship of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee is very important for America, for our commitment to democracy and human rights and for areas in which he has particular interest, such as Cyprus, Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. His return is important for a number of reasons.

Members of the US Congress have quietly blocked major US arms sales to Turkey for nearly two years in an effort to pressure Ankara to abandon its Russian S-400 missile system, news website Defense News reported.

On the final day of his official visit to the US and his second day at Washington, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with prominent members of the two congressional legislatures, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC) celebrated Wednesday's passage of the "Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act," authored by Senators Robert Menendez  and Marco Rubio, through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.