to respect the rights of non-Muslims. Several thousand southern Sudanese women have been imprisoned and punished in recent years for violation of the Islamic laws.

Are non-Muslims being persecuted by the government of Sudan? All of the panelists?

Mr. KANSTEINER. Mike, you look at that pretty closely.

Mr. YOUNG. Mr. Gilman, absolutely. That is at least some part of what is targeted in the south. It is also important to stress that a part of the problem with food distribution has been attempts to use some of the food distribution as a way to force conversions. We found substantial evidence of that. Plus, it is important to stress that Muslims in the northern part of Sudan have also been subject to severe persecution if they do not follow the appropriate version of Islam that the government promulgates.

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Winter, do you want to comment on that? Mr. WINTER. I am just glad that Mike brought that up. There is substantial opposition to this government in the north amongst Muslim populations because the government represents an extremist brand of Islam. So the difficulties with the government are not only in the south, there are plenty of people in the north that also suffer.

Mr. GILMAN. One more question, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HYDE. I am sorry-well, no, you have 32 seconds. Go ahead.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you.

Sudan denies, the government denies permission for flights of humanitarian aid in southern Sudan. In 1998, an estimated 100,000 people died in part due to the refusal of humanitarian flights.

Are they still preventing humanitarian assistance from being sent to some regions, Mr. Winter?

Mr. WINTER. Yes, absolutely. This is why I am proposing that a major part of our future direction in negotiations with Sudan deals with this issue. Our belief at USAID is that we need to assure that the government cannot unilaterally detain humanitarian flights as they are currently doing in western upper Nile where there are a lot of people in serious jeopardy.

Chairman HYDE. Mr. Payne.

Mr. GILMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling this very important hearing. I find the testimony very interesting. Thank you very much, Mr. Assistant Secretary. And of course, Mr. Winter, you are probably the most knowledgeable person at the table on the issues of Sudan, having served for so many years in another capacity. And, Chairman Young, I certainly could not agree more strongly with your recommendations and the findings of the commission, and I would hope that you would continue to advocate and have your supporters advocate so that perhaps we can get some movement in the situation in Sudan. It is crystal clear that the National Islamic Front government in Sudan is still an evil government. It is a government that continues to bomb its people. It is a government that continues to enslave its people. It is a government that continues to use food as a weapon. It is a government that has over 40 sites currently in southern Sudan that

have been called "off limits." It is a government that has denied the tri-partite agreement of 1989, which said that food should not be used as a weapon. And so there is no question about the fact that the government of the Sudan has not changed.

Let me ask a question: It was shortly after September 11th when the conference committee was on the Floor-was Mr. Tancredo actually getting ready to name the conferees? Perhaps, Mr. Assistant Secretary, was it the White House that had a message that said to pull the conferees as Mr. Tancredo was ready to speak, he was called off the Floor?

Could you tell me about that situation, to your knowledge?

Mr. KANSTEINER. I am sorry, Congressman. I do not have any knowledge of that.

Mr. PAYNE. Well, I do. [Laughter.] And there was a message from the White House that said because of September the 11th, the view on Sudan has changed.

Now we are going to be a government that stands for something, and after 40 years of death and starvation, that all of a sudden an evil, wicked government becomes our allies; a government that harbored Osama bin Laden as he planted bombs in our Embassies, all of a sudden becomes a government that has now changed; and so for once we thought we had something that could finally make the government of Sudan listen. We had capital market sanctions looming in a position that people doing business in Sudan had to report to the Securities Commission. But this tool has been denied us.

Let me ask a question because I am a little bit confused on this too, Mr. Kansteiner. You say that there is support for self-determination for the people of southern Sudan. However, in Mr. Danforth's report there is an apparent linkage of self-determination and secession. His rejection of self-determination as an option for the people of southern Sudan disturbs me because the IGAD process has always said it is an option; not that anyone was pushing it, but that self-determination should be an option.

For the Danforth Report to make it clear that the Senator does not support that as an option, I think, weakens the whole negotiating position.

Could you comment on that?

Mr. KANSTEINER. Certainly. I might preface by explaining that Senator Danforth was asked by President Bush to be a special envoy to look at the possibility of a peace process actually happening in Sudan, and that was his primary tasking. He did an excellent and superb job in coming up with some tests to see if the belligerents were willing and close enough for us to push.

On self-determination, Congressman Payne, you know that it is an absolute cornerstone for the peace process. In fact, I, quite frankly, think self-determination and the sovereignty issue of the south is probably at the very core of this entire peace process, so that it has to be front and center.

Mr. PAYNE. Let me interrupt before the time has expired, the 30 seconds

Chairman HYDE. The gentleman's time has expired.

Mr. PAYNE [continuing]. Because I have one last question since I went along with your request not to make even a statement at

the opening, as Ranking Member of the Committee, and I did obediently follow your request. One quick second?

Chairman HYDE. Yes.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. [Laughter.] Let me just ask, why has the Administration agreed to the recent decision to ship relief operations from Kenya to the government-controlled el-Abib organization?

Mr. KANSTEINER. I am sorry? To ship from?

Mr. PAYNE. From the IGAD land

Mr. KANSTEINER. Oh.

Mr. PAYNE [continuing]. To the new plan run by an organization in the government of Sudan.

Mr. KANSTEINER. We have not. We see IGAD as clearly the framework. Lt. General Sumbeiywo, the Kenyan who is the Secretariat of the IGAD Sudan process, is the Chairman of this process. We are fully behind him. We are engaged with him, and I might add we have foreign service officers in the State Department, in A.I.D., people on the ground in Nairobi to help the IGAD process become the framework that we hope it will be, and the peace process that we hope it will be.

Chairman HYDE. Mr. Leach.

Mr. LEACH. Mr. Secretary, in your response to Congressman Lantos you implied, or I think were beginning to build a case, that the Administration may be opposed to capital market sanctions.

Is that the case? And could you articulate your reasoning?

Mr. KANSTEINER. We, in fact, are very opposed to the section 9, which deals with capital market sanctions that the House has passed. We feel that it is a precedent for political intervention in U.S. capital markets, and it is a detrimental precedent, and we would not like to see it become law of this country. We think it sends all the wrong signals, not only to foreign investors in our country, but, quite frankly, it sends all the wrong signals to the bourses and those that control the bourses around the world.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you.

Mr. Young, you might have implied a different position. Is that right or wrong?

Mr. YOUNG. Congressman Leach, that is absolutely right. We strongly support capital market sanctions. To make the case very simply, first, oil is the key to Khartoum's capacity to continue to prosecute the war. I think that is unarguable. In fact, the only real movement we have seen in Khartoum, their willingness to accept envoys and so forth, occurred just about the same time the House was debating its bill that contained capital market sanctions. I think that is a signal.

The companies have said they would leave Sudan. The President of Talisman has said he would leave Sudan if U.S. markets were not available. I am very pro-free trade. I had the opportunity and privilege to work on the NAFTA and the Uruguay Round, and have talked and written on trade for many years. I understand its centrality and importance. But this is a very narrowly targeted set of sanctions. One is disclosure. I am amazed that people can oppose disclosure. I do not understand. I thought that it facilitated markets and does not harm markets, and that certainly is half of the

proposal. The second half only looks at an incredibly small range of countries.

It does not seem to us, in our deliberations, to set a precedent for anything beyond saying if you have a war of genocidal proportions and there is an instrumentality of that war that makes prosecution of it considerably more likely, then companies that facilitate it should not have the opportunity of facilitating it by access to U.S. instrumentalities, particularly in capital markets.

Mr. LEACH. Mr. Winter, you seem to be the intermediate point here. What is your position?

Mr. WINTER. I have a public record on this from my prior life. The only thing I can say is Mr. Kansteiner speaks for the Administration.

Mr. KANSTEINER. I just might add, Congressman, that this is the Administration position, and Mike is not part of the official U.S. Government Administration and so

Mr. LEACH. Let me ask one final question though because Mr. Young threw out two divisions here.

Is there a possibility of a compromise based around the word "disclosure"?

Mr. KANSTEINER. I am not sure this is the place for the negotiating to go on, but I think the greatest concerns lie in section 9. I might leave it there.

Mr. LEACH. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of your thoughts, and particularly Mr. Winter's, which is one of the more subtle pronouncements that this Member has heard in awhile. [Laughter.]

Chairman HYDE. Mr. Meeks.

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.

Let me just ask, I was just wondering with the two-piece processes-IGÅD on the one hand and Egypt and Libya initiative on the other is there any possibility of a coordination there? Can that be successful? And can the people in the south get a fair deal from the Egyptian/Libyan plan?

Mr. KANSTEINER. That's a very good question in the sense that there are some positive parts of the Egyptian plan. We are now trying to coordinate some dialogue between Nairobi and Cairo on how we might be able to incorporate some of those useful ideas in the Egyptian plan into the IGAD process.

Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Young, what is your opinion?

Mr. YOUNG. We have not really taken a position on which process makes the most sense, but rather we feel strongly that the IGAD principles articulate the vision. That process has been stalled from time to time. If there are other processes that may accomplish that, we have not really taken a position on them. But we do think that whatever process is used, those principles really need to be the organizing theme. We very much appreciate the Administration's support of those principles that has been so eloquently articulated today.

Mr. MEEKS. The other question of this "new strategy" toward Sudan where the United States is calling on have the cooperation more fully with our European allies and Kenya and Egypt. Historically, there has always been differences between the U.S. and the

EU toward Sudan. And both Kenya and Egypt have been unable to get a sustained peace process moving in the past.

On what terms do you think that the Administration will engage our allies and regional partners in a peace process, and what happens if our goals are different?

Mr. KANSTEINER. You are putting your finger on some tough diplomatic maneuvering, and it has begun, and we are working it. The Norwegian, British, and Swiss involvement to date has been very helpful as far as we are concerned in the sense that they have now rallied behind the IGAD process. They have recognized that it is the framework where a peace deal is going to be hammered out, and they have been helpful.

The Swiss, for instance, were extremely helpful in pulling together a venue and an opportunity for the Nuba Mountain ceasefire to actually happen. That is where the dialogue and the discussions and the negotiations actually took place. So it was under some U.S. and British help, but the Swiss played a very important role.

So we are doing that coordination. It is not easy, and it takes some time, but it is coming in the right direction.

Mr. MEEKS. And finally just one quick question, just a follow up from what Mr. Payne had initiated. I think sometimes people may have a different definition as to what self-determination is, in the Danforth Report it seems it defined self-determination as the people in the south having the option of voting to separate from the north in Sudan. Would that be supported by the U.S.?

Mr. KANSTEINER. Self-determination is kind of a catch-all phrase that includes a referendum on the status, be it one country, two systems, separate countries, separate sovereignties. Is it going to be a Federal system? Is it going to be a confederal system? Selfdetermination is kind of a catch-all phrase that includes all of those.

Again, we do not want to predetermine the negotiations, but we absolutely see and recognize that the self-determination question, the status of the south question is front and center.

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you.

Chairman HYDE. Mr. Chris Smith of New Jersey.

Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair

man.

You know, Mr. Secretary, I agreed with Mr. Young a moment ago when he talked about the oil revenues being so vitally important to this war effort. And it seems to me that in any war what you try to do is starve the aggressor of his lifeline, especially his fuel line, and in this case they get a double benefit from these oil investments. They get not only fuel to run their war machinery and fly their helicopters and jets, they also get the capability to buy more sophisticated military hardware to prosecute this slaughter. This is not just a typical capital markets issue, I would respectfully submit. This is financing a war; if you turn off the spigot, it seems to me, you undermine their capability to prosecute this war. So perhaps you might want to comment on that.

But I do want to ask you, you know, back in 1996, my Subcommittee held the first hearing ever on shadow slavery in Sudan. We were met with widespread disbelief as to whether or not it ac