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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (13958)	6/6/2002 1:40:46 AM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Respond to of 36161

U.S. House members slam Bush's Sudan oil policy By Vicki Allen WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) - Members of the House International Relations Committee lashed out at the Bush administration on Wednesday for blocking legislation aimed at cutting off oil revenues that Sudan is using to finance its war against rebels in the south. Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner said the administration opposed a key part of the Sudan Peace Act that overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives a year ago. It would bar investing in the African country's oil fields from raising capital in the United States and from trading their securities on U.S. markets. Appearing before the committee, Kansteiner said the provision would set a dangerous precedent of politicizing the capital markets. "When you can politically determine what companies can list on your stock exchange, that has long-term implications," he said. But Republicans and Democrats on the committee said the administration was giving the Khartoum government access to money to wage the war in which two million people have been killed on both sides and more than five million displaced. "Are you living in this world, Mr. Kansteiner?" said Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the committee's top Democrat. As long as the bill is stalled, he said, "Khartoum is playing the game of peace while conducting a vicious war of annihilation." "In any war what you try to do is starve the aggressor of his life line, his fuel line," said Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican. "I'm a free market guy to a large extent, but when it comes to a country that has killed two million people" such sanctions were justified, he said. The Sudan People's Liberation Army, the main rebel group in Sudan's 18-year-old civil war, wants greater autonomy for the mostly animist and Christian south from the mainly Muslim, Arabic-speaking north. In its Sudan oil policy, the administration is trying to walk a line between conservative Republicans who back Sudan's Christians on the one hand and free-traders and oil industry backers who do not want to block oil investment on the other. Canada's Talisman Energy is the most prominent foreign company working in Sudan, with a 25 percent stake in the one major project. Last year Talisman said it would reconsider its position if it was prevented from raising capital in the United States. The Sudan bill had been set to go to a House-Senate conference to work out a final version, but was blocked when a Senate Republican -- who House members declined to name -- put a legislative "hold" on the process. Echoing findings of President George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan, former Sen. John Danforth, Kansteiner said a key to a potential peace plan was a system to distribute throughout the country the oil revenues that have been used by the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum to fund its campaign. Also citing Danforth's findings, Kansteiner said there was momentum from both sides for a peace effort and the humanitarian situation in Sudan had improved somewhat. Roger Winter, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said despite the Sudan government's pledge to allow humanitarian aid in the south, it was still setting up barriers. In February, government helicopter gunships strafed civilians waiting in line at a U.N. feeding center, killing 17 and wounding many more. Winter said his agency wanted to circumvent the Sudan government's current power to veto humanitarian flights, possibly by setting up an internationally monitored flight clearance system. Michael Young, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said capital sanctions to stem Sudan's oil trade were essential. "The only way to get Khartoum's attention is to curtail its oil revenues, the only asset that is keeping it from bankruptcy," Young said. The commission is part of the federal government, but Kansteiner said it was not speaking for the administration.