The US Senate agreed to spend $592 million on a huge new embassy Baghdad, setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives, which rejected funding for the project because of the high cost.
Senators approved the embassy funding 54-45 as part of an $81 billion emergency spending bill to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and help fund tsunami relief.
The House of Representatives removed the money for the Baghdad compound, which would be the largest US embassy in the world, when it passed its version of the bill last month.
Nevertheless, supporters of the emergency spending bill said they expected the Senate to pass the measure on Friday.
Once the Senate approves its version, it will have to work out differences with the House before the bill can be sent to President George W. Bush for his signature.
The Bush administration supports building the embassy.
Senators also approved a plan to spend nearly $390 million on 650 additional border patrol agents and unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the southwest border with Mexico.
Some conservative Republicans in Congress have targeted the Baghdad embassy project to hold down spending and trim the record budget deficit, which hit $412 billion last year.
"The emergency supplemental (spending bill) should only contain items that we need to fight the war on terror," said Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, who argued that Congress should spend just $106 million on constructing the embassy and decide on additional funds later.
But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, said full funding was needed now to quickly provide a safer environment for Americans in Iraq.
He said US personnel are "trying to carry out the work of the embassy in a palace formerly occupied by Saddam Hussein that is not safe" from "terrorist" activities and that "there is a perimeter that is very difficult to defend."
The Senate also voted to reverse the Pentagon's plans to retire an aging aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy, and maintain the minimum of such ships at 12 until at least 2008.
Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens criticized the decision, saying it stood in the way of modernizing the navy. "The very fact that this 40-year vessel is out there...is wrong to begin with," he said.
The Senate spending bill also provides $907 million for victims of last December's Indian Ocean tsunami, slightly less than the version passed by the House.
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