[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 146 (Monday, September 15, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8531-S8533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




SENATE RESOLUTION 660--CONDEMNING ONGOING SALES OF ARMS TO BELLIGERENTS 
  IN SUDAN, INCLUDING THE GOVERNMENT OF SUDAN, AND CALLING FOR BOTH A 
CESSATION OF SUCH SALES AND AN EXPANSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS EMBARGO 
                         ON ARMS SALES TO SUDAN

  Mr. NELSON of Florida (for himself, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Brownback, Mr. 
Casey, Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Dole, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Hatch, 
Mr. Isakson, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Martinez, Mr. Menendez, Mr. 
Snowe, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Cardin, and Mr. Coleman) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

                              S. Res. 660

       Whereas, since 2003, the conflict in the Darfur region of 
     Sudan has killed at least 300,000 people and displaced more 
     than 2,500,000, according to the United Nations;
       Whereas, on July 22, 2004, the Senate declared, ``the 
     atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide'', and on 
     September 9, 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell 
     testified before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the 
     Senate that ``genocide has occurred and may still be 
     occurring in Darfur'' and ``the Government of Sudan and the 
     Janjaweed bear responsibility'';
       Whereas, on July 30, 2004, the United Nations Security 
     Council passed Resolution 1556, imposing an arms embargo on 
     non-governmental belligerents in Darfur, requiring ``all 
     states [to] take the necessary measures to prevent the sale 
     or supply . . . of arms and related materiel of all types, 
     including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and 
     equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the 
     aforementioned'' to those belligerents;
       Whereas, on March 29, 2005, the United Nations Security 
     Council passed Resolution

[[Page S8532]]

     1591, extending the embargo imposed by Security Council 
     Resolution 1556 to apply to the Government of Sudan, 
     establishing a sanctions committee to monitor the arms 
     embargo, and prohibiting the Government of Sudan from moving 
     arms into Darfur except with the advance approval of that 
     committee;
       Whereas Security Council Resolutions 1556 and 1591 together 
     impose on all United Nations member states the obligation not 
     to sell or supply arms to any belligerent operating in 
     Darfur, including the Sudanese military, and obligate the 
     Government of Sudan not to transfer any arms to Darfur 
     without the approval of the sanctions committee;
       Whereas, in September 2006, the Panel of Experts on the 
     Sudan, established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 
     1591, reported to the United Nations Security Council that a 
     senior official of the Government of Sudan told the Panel 
     that ``the Government had a sovereign right to transfer 
     weapons and additional military personnel into Darfur without 
     obtaining the specific permission of the Security Council'';
       Whereas the Panel of Experts on the Sudan also concluded 
     that ``the Government of the Sudan continues to violate the 
     arms embargo by transferring equipment and related weapons 
     into Darfur'' and that ``[t]he Government of the Sudan 
     remains adamant that it has the right to transfer troops and 
     equipment into Darfur without reference to the sanctions 
     Committee'' established pursuant to Security Council 
     Resolution 1591;
       Whereas, in October 2007, the Panel of Experts on the Sudan 
     reported numerous instances in which the Government of Sudan 
     had transferred arms to Darfur without seeking the approval 
     of the sanctions committee;
       Whereas, according to a May 2007 report by Amnesty 
     International, weapons transferred to Sudan from China and 
     Russia are used extensively in Darfur;
       Whereas, according to a July 2008 report by the British 
     Broadcasting Corporation, weapons have been transferred to 
     Darfur from China since the arms embargo imposed by Security 
     Council Resolution 1591 became effective;
       Whereas, at the insistence of the Governments of China and 
     Russia, arms sales to the Government of Sudan were excluded 
     from the arms embargo imposed by Security Council Resolution 
     1556, though not from Security Council Resolution 1591, 
     passed 8 months later; and
       Whereas, according to data provided by the Government of 
     Sudan to the United Nations, arms sales from China to the 
     Government of Sudan have increased dramatically since the 
     late 1990s, and from 2004 through 2006, China supplied 
     approximately 90 percent of small arms imported into Sudan: 
     Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
       (1) the United States should seek a peaceful resolution to 
     the conflict in Darfur and should continue to pursue a 
     political solution as well as the immediate and unfettered 
     deployment of the peacekeeping forces of the United Nations-
     African Union Mission in Darfur, without regard to the 
     country of origin of those forces;
       (2) the United States supports United Nations Security 
     Council Resolutions 1556 (2004) and 1591 (2005), imposing an 
     arms embargo on all belligerents in Darfur, and supports 
     consistent enforcement of the embargo;
       (3) taken together, the obligation imposed by the United 
     Nations on all member states to ``take the necessary measures 
     to prevent the sale or supply'' of arms to belligerents 
     operating in Darfur, the well-documented existence of arms in 
     Darfur that were transferred from China and Russia, and the 
     insistence of the Government of Sudan that it will not abide 
     by the embargo, lead to the conclusion that continued sale of 
     arms to Sudan under these circumstances violates the United 
     Nations arms embargo imposed by Security Council Resolutions 
     1556 and 1591;
       (4) all United Nations member states should immediately 
     cease all arms sales to the Government of Sudan, until the 
     conflict in Darfur, and the armed conflict related to the 
     Comprehensive Peace Agreement, have been peacefully resolved; 
     and
       (5) the United States Permanent Representative to the 
     United Nations should use the voice and vote of the United 
     States in the United Nations Security Council to seek an 
     expansion of the arms embargo imposed by Security Council 
     Resolutions 1556 and 1591 to cover all of Sudan, with an 
     appropriate exception for non-lethal assistance to the 
     Government of Southern Sudan.

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a 
resolution calling for a stop to the illegal flow of arms into Sudan 
and an expansion of the United Nations embargo on arms sales to Sudan.
  I am happy we have a number of cosponsors of this legislation--as a 
matter of fact, Senators Inhofe, Brownback, Casey, Clinton, Dole, 
Durbin, Feingold, Hatch, Isakson, Kerry, Lieberman, Martinez, Menendez, 
Snowe, and Boxer.
  You can see with Senators spanning the breadth and depth of the 
Senate, they are recognizing this is one of the most important issues 
facing planet Earth at this time in trying to stop the genocide in 
Darfur. Last July 14, the Chief Prosecutor of the International 
Criminal Court in The Hague requested a warrant for the arrest of 
Sudan's President Bashir on the charges of genocide, war crimes, and 
crimes against humanity.
  In part, it was because of his arming the jingaweit militias in 
Darfur. Our colleagues certainly are urging the prosecution of Bashir 
for these crimes. But it is now time for the international community 
and the Congress to take further action in order to prevent the 
continued export of arms to the regime, the Sudan regime in Khartoum.
  This resolution is a call to action to stop the steady stream of arms 
going from countries such as China and Russia into Darfur. The 
loopholes in the current UN arms regime are recognized as the main 
cause for the continued violence and the killings there. Two UN arms 
embargoes are currently in place prohibiting the Government of Sudan 
from moving arms into Darfur except with the advance approval of the UN 
monitoring body.
  The embargoes also require foreign nations to take measures to ensure 
they do not militarily assist anyone in the conflict in Darfur. Yet 
those embargoes are impossible to enforce since the Government of Sudan 
can still receive as many weapons as it wants, as long as the 
government in Khartoum promises that the arms are not going to be used 
in Darfur, which, of course, it makes those promises and then 
completely ignores them.
  As Sudan's main weapons suppliers, China and Russia, they turn a 
blind eye to the fact that the weapons they sold are being used to kill 
the innocent civilians in Darfur, and the weapons continue to flow into 
the country.
  Now, remember, earlier in the year, China had shipped a huge weapons 
cache to the regime in Zimbabwe. But fortunately the ship was turned 
away by the dockworkers in South Africa. In the case of Sudan, however, 
the Chinese arms reached their final destination.
  According to the United Nations, China supplies approximately 90 
percent of Sudan's imports of small arms today. Expanding the present 
embargo would help us prohibit China and Russia from selling to Sudan 
regardless of where those arms were used in the country.
  In the October 2007 report, the U.N. panel of experts cited numerous 
instances in which the Government of Sudan had egregiously violated the 
obligations under international law. Likewise, Amnesty International 
has reported that Chinese and Russian weapons are used extensively in 
Darfur.
  This year, the BBC aired a long expose on the arms flow into Sudan, 
and that BBC expose proved that Chinese weapons have been transferred 
to Darfur since the arms embargo was imposed by the United Nations 
resolution.
  So how much more proof do we need? I tried to go to the Sudan last 
year, but the Government of Sudan denied me a visa. So I had to go in 
through the back door by going into Chad and going to the border there. 
As I traveled along that border of Chad and the Sudan, I saw there the 
squalid refugee camps where 400,000 of those people who had fled Darfur 
had taken refuge from the killings and the violence.
  By the way, the killings and the violence did not stop once they were 
in the refugee camps in Chad. Since 2003, the conflict in Darfur has 
killed at least an unbelievable 300,000 people, and it has displaced 
more than 2.5 million.
  They know the horrors of war, hunger, and, unfortunately the women 
know the horrors of rape. And the attacks on the refugee camps 
continue.
  As a matter of fact, the men in the refugee camps make the women go 
out to collect the firewood. Anytime they go outside of the perimeter 
of the refugee camp, they are subject to being attacked and raped.
  Governments, religious leaders, human rights activists, and 
nongovernmental organizations have issued calls to end the genocide. 
The people of Darfur, nevertheless, remain vulnerable to daily attacks 
by these militias, armed with Chinese and Russian firearms, and they 
continue to suffer.
  We have been putting the spotlight on Darfur for several years now 
and nothing gets done. The Government of Sudan makes promises, the 
United Nations tries to do things, and nothing gets done. Resolutions 
and envoys have

[[Page S8533]]

thus far failed to stop countries from funneling the arms into Darfur.
  At the upcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly, we 
now have another opportunity to name and shame the perpetrators and to 
halt the immoral export of weapons to the killing fields.
  That is what this resolution is about. It pledges to continue United 
States support for a political solution in Darfur, and it calls for the 
immediate and unfettered deployment of a United Nations-African Union 
peacekeeping force, without regard to the country of origin of those 
forces.
  It calls for the immediate end of arms sales to the Government of 
Sudan from all U.N. member states. That will continue until the 
conflict in Darfur has been resolved. This resolution calls for the use 
of the voice and vote of the United States in the Security Council in 
order to expand that embargo to cover all of the arms going into the 
Sudan except for an appropriate exception for the nonlethal assistance 
to the Government of southern Sudan. At this upcoming 63rd U.N. General 
Assembly, when it opens next week, the U.S. must support this expanded 
embargo that will try to bring some sense into the madness that is over 
there. If the U.N. Security Council were to strengthen the embargo 
regime, it would send a strong signal to the Sudanese Government that 
their support in the international community is shifting.
  It is going to be this Senator's great privilege, as one of two 
Senators representing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to 
represent the Senate at the United Nations General Assembly. I plan to 
bring up this issue over and over again to the U.N. delegates I meet. I 
hope the Senate will see fit to support this effort by passing this 
resolution.

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