COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS TOM LANTOS, California, Chairman HOWARD L. BERMAN, California DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey BRAD MILLER, North Carolina GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ELTON GALLEGLY, California DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois EDWARD R. ROYCE, California STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado RON PAUL, Texas JEFF FLAKE, Arizona JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia MIKE PENCE, Indiana THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan JOE WILSON, South Carolina JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska BOB INGLIS, South Carolina ROBERT R. KING, Staff Director YLEEM POBLETE, Republican Staff Director PEARL ALICE MARSH, Senior Professional Staff Member GENELL BROWN, Staff Associate XII) CONTENTS Page LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING Stephen Morrison and Bates Gill of the Center for Strategic and International The Honorable Andrew Natsios: Prepared statement 1241 (III) THE ESCALATING CRISIS IN DARFUR: ARE THERE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE? THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2007 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Lantos (chairman of the committee) presiding. Chairman LANTOS. The committee will come to order. Humankind is failing the sons and daughters of Darfur horribly. We have watched as an entire people has been persecuted, displaced, dispossessed, raped, and slaughtered. It defies belief to realize that this has been going on for 3 long years and right before the averted eyes of the entire world. As a survivor of the Holocaust, I cannot bear silent witness to the first genocide of the 21st century. Our committee will demand action from the administration, from the United Nations and from our friends and allies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and others, as I am sick and tired of waiting for a diplomatic solution to this tragedy. The much heralded Darfur Peace Agreement did nothing to stop the genocide. Nobody in the Sudanese Government has been held accountable for the mass killings. There has been no protection of civilians, and there has been no reversal of ethnic cleansing. Even targeted sanctions against those responsible for the genocide have had little impact on the Sudanese leaders, who find the benefits of their oil dealings with China. more profitable than their assets frozen in the United States. With or without the consent of Khartoum, we need a large number of international troops on the ground to protect the people of Darfur from slaughter, and we need them now. The U.N. Security Council has correctly authorized the deployment of such a civilian protection force to Darfur to augment the under gunned and under manned African Union troops already on the ground. But President al-Bashir and his cronies have rebuffed all these treatises to allow for the deployment of these desperately needed troops. How can we change Khartoum's mind about the deployment of a civilian protection force? If we are cynical, we can try the approach used by Chinese President Hu Jintao during his recent visit to Sudan. While urging Sudanese cooperation with the United Nations, President Hu Jintao made a jaw-droppingly generous offer of $17 million to build a new presidential palace, $104 million in debt forgiveness, and the promise to build a new railway line. (1) |