[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[Senate]
[Page 28388]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 SUDAN

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I wish to talk about the situation in 
Sudan. The situation in Darfur has been widely noted and known. It is 
deteriorating. It is deteriorating slowly. We want to get the factions 
back together to try to talk about what it is we can do to bring some 
stability.
  Something that is not widely followed right now is the deteriorating 
situation between the north and south. We have had a long-term peace 
agreement in place now for a couple of years between the north and 
south that ended the longest running civil war in Africa. It had been 
going on for 20 years. Two million people were killed. Now the south 
has backed away somewhat from the government. The north government is 
not complying with the peace agreement. I will be bringing out a more 
full statement to my colleagues. This is very dangerous, as far as the 
situation that now we could get back into a problem between the north 
and the south again, and have two fronts going.
  In the south, long term, there was a genocide going on there before 
it took place in Darfur. We have to be vigilant toward the Sudanese 
Government, which is the problem. This is a genocidal government in 
Khartoum. We have to get on top of that situation and make sure it 
doesn't deteriorate between the north along with what is taking place 
in the west and Darfur. It could well be that Sudan in the future is a 
country that breaks up into three or four different countries because 
of the way the Khartoum government is trying to force people into their 
ideological box. It is a militant Islamist government started by Osama 
bin Laden, this iteration. It is the problem, but we have to deal with 
it, where it is in this situation. I don't want us to take our eyes off 
the ball.
  In the south, where there has been a lot of work over a long period 
of time to get that peace, I hope that we not lose that peace in the 
overall situation.
  Finally, the President of Congo is in Washington now. I met with him 
yesterday, along with a number of my colleagues. One of the issues I 
want to bring up here, and I will be developing some legislation, is 
that a number of radical militant groups are raiding in the eastern 
part of the Congo. They are dislocating nearly 450,000 people now. In 
these guerrilla movements, what they do is get control of an area and 
then they get mineral rights for individuals or to groups to come in 
and mine things, such as coaltan. It is a particular metal used in 
making cell phones. That is how they finance their rebel movement. We 
saw this in the blood diamond issue in western Africa. What we did then 
was put a certification process together, that you had to certify that 
the diamonds came from legitimate means, and that shut the financing 
down.
  My hope is we can do something similar in the Congo, where we can 
have a certification on minerals like the coaltan and then shut the 
financing down for these groups that run civilian populations out of an 
area. I think that is something we can do credibly. Our markets and our 
economy are our key foreign policy tools. Here is a place where we can 
use the U.S. market to try to help bring stability to a region that is 
key for stability throughout Africa. If we get stability in the Congo 
it might bring stability throughout the region. I hope we can do those 
things.
  I appreciate my colleagues' time and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.

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