WASHINGTON, June 5: The White House plans to - ask Congress'td’apprhvca substantial funding increase to beef ftp security at US embassies worldwide, the Washington Post reported Saturday, reports AFP.

President Bill Clinton will present lawmakers with a plan next week that would allocate 11.4 billion dollars over 10 years for the construction of embassies and the hiring of security personnel, administration officials told the US daily.

This will be the most comprehensive and ambitious embassy construction program ever put in place,” an unnamed senior official is quoted as saying.

After last year's twin bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Clinton proposed spending three billion dollars over five years to reinforce security at existing embassies and finance new constructions of diplomatic mis-, sions.

But lawmakers and review panels investigating the bombings slammed the plan as woefully inadequate, prompting Clinton to revise the proposal, the Post said.

The new plan will be presented as an amendment to Clinton's budget proposal for the year 2000, the daily said.

Additional funding for the security upgrades will come from cutting budgets for other

programs, a senior official told the Post, without specifying which programs would be affected.

The official said, however, that State Department funding and foreign aid budgets would not be reduced.

The East Africa bombings left more than 200 people dead and 4.000 injured last August, raising questions about the safety of US diplomatic personnel abroad. .

A probe by State Department panels headed by former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral William Crowe found security at Washington's diplomatic compounds overseas to be severely lacking.