WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell is trying to use his position on a crucial Senate committee to force the military to release money for chemical weapons disposal programs in Kentucky and Colorado.

McConnell, R-Ky., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, sponsored an amendment to a spending package that would require the Defense Department to release -- and spend -- money earmarked for the sites in past budgets. That money has been frozen as the military considers other ways of destroying the weapons.

The committee passed the amendment this week, and the full Senate is expected to begin considering the spending package next week, McConnell said. He said the package is a "must-pass bill," that includes money for the war in Iraq.

"Our goal here is to get them back on track heading in the direction of meeting the timetables we laid out," McConnell said.

The Pentagon has frozen about $813 million from the two sites in past budgets. Officials recently released about $70 million of that total, enough to lift stop-work orders and allow progress to continue slowly.

McConnell's amendment would prevent the military from shifting any of the money to other projects. It also sets an aggressive timeline, requiring site managers to spend $100 million of the money released within four months of when Congress passes the bill. The Defense Department also would be required to report to Congress bimonthly on how money is being spent and how it will meet international treaty deadlines.

Under an international treaty ratified by the Senate in 1997, the weapons must be destroyed by 2012. The United States has destroyed just over a third of the 31,000 tons of lethal agents it had stockpiled in eight states and at the Johnson Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

The Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, Ky., and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Pueblo, Colo., are the only stockpile sites where disposal facilities have not already been constructed. The military is now studying whether there are cheaper ways to destroy the weapons, including transporting them to other facilities.

Though legal hurdles and strong opposition from lawmakers and area communities stand in the way of any effort to move the weapons, McConnell's amendment would specifically bar the military from considering that option. Military officials said they plan to complete a study of the option this month.

"They can study it until they're blue in the face, it's not going to happen," McConnell said. "It's a waste of their time and energy to be studying something that has no possibility of ever occurring."

Craig Williams, director of a Kentucky-based watchdog group called Chemical Weapons Working Group, commended McConnell's "consistently strong leadership."

Because the amendment is not included in the House version of the spending package, it would have to be inserted when the two bodies confer about the bill.