Current Situation In Darfur

Floor Speech

CURRENT SITUATION IN DARFUR -- (Extensions of Remarks - April 25, 2007)

* Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, last week the House Committee on Foreign Relations held an important hearing on the current situation in Darfur. I am grateful to Chairman TOM LANTOS for keeping this critical issue in the spotlight of the committee.

* President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has proven that he considers the people of Darfur to be merely pawns in a game that he is playing with the international community. Even as his representative is sending a letter to the UN Secretary General accepting the Heavy Support Package that is supposed to lead to a joint UN-AU protective force in the region, we are receiving news reports that his government is flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur under the disguise of UN and AU aircraft in order to fuel the conflict.

* The gulf between Bashir's actions and his words is as wide as the callous attitude I encountered when I met with him personally in Khartoum and the desperate, deeply grieved look on the faces of the refugees I met in the camps of Darfur. It is time for the global community to stop considering Bashir as a legitimate negotiating partner and to start treating him as he is--the despotic tyrant responsible for more than 400,000 deaths and 2 million people displaced from their homes in Darfur. That is in addition to the 2 million dead and 4 million who were displaced during the war in the south.

* I welcome President Bush's announcement last week that our government will be taking several new steps if the Sudanese Government does not meet its commitments. I strongly urge the President to make that window of opportunity for Bashir to finally follow through on his word extremely short. Bashir has long since lost any entitlement to one day more than is absolutely necessary to establish peace in Darfur.

* In order to be effective, however, the efforts of the United States must be joined by those of the international community. We must ALL decide that NOW is the time to end this crisis. Our partners on the UN Security Council should agree immediately to the resolution that will be introduced by the United States applying new sanctions against the Sudanese Government and any individual that violates human rights or obstructs the peace process. Particularly given the revelations of the government's continued military support to the Arab militias, the Security Council must also impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to the government of Sudan, prohibit Sudan's government from conducting any offensive military flights over Darfur, and strengthen the international community's ability to monitor and report any violations.

* The Government of the People's Republic of China, in particular, should take a leadership role in ending the Darfur conflict. Instead of lending money to Bashir for a new presidential palace, the Chinese Government should be pressuring him to enable the people of Darfur to live in their own homes in peace and security. I have long exhorted the Chinese Government to stop the reprehensible violation of the human rights of its own people, and I have signaled the upcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing as a singular opportunity for the international community to insist on the respect of those rights. I applaud the outstanding efforts of Ms. Mia Farrow, one of our distinguished witnesses at the hearing, to galvanize the world to object to China's hosting of the Olympics at the same time it is ignoring the plight of our brothers and sisters suffering in Darfur. I would encourage my colleagues here in Congress to join these efforts with respect to the Olympics and to seek other measures to end the genocide.

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