Global Policy Forum

By David Briscoe

Washington - The Treasury Department today imposed economic sanctions against Sudan's state-owned oil enterprise and a joint venture of Sudan and three foreign oil companies. A new government commission on religious freedom is appealing for broader sanctions to prevent rights abusers from raising money on US stock markets.

Treasury announced that US citizens or companies can no longer engage in trade or conduct financial transactions with Sudan's Sudapet Ltd. or with Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company Ltd. under a 1997 order that imposes sanctions on Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism.

Greater Nile is a joint venture of Sudan, China's national oil company, Malaysia's state-owned Petronas and Canada's Talisman Energy Corp. No sanctions are designated against those entities.

Sudan's government and 125 Sudanese entities now fall under the sanctions, which call for criminal penalties of up to $500,000 for each violation for corporations and $250,000 fines for individuals with up to 10 years in prison.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom wants the sanctions also to apply to efforts by any company to raise money on U.S. stock markets that would benefit Sudan. The Treasury Department says sanctions against Sudan, imposed under a 1997 presidential order, do not apply to capital markets.

The commission plans to watch new stock offerings from foreign government corporations involved with Sudan and use its power of persuasion with the markets - the only power it has.

The nine-member commission focused in its first public hearing Tuesday on abuses against Christians in Sudan, which the United States considers an exporter of terrorism, and on a Chinese government-owned oil company's projects in that East African country.

At Tuesday's hearing, an exiled Sudanese Catholic bishop alleged that a Sudanese military plane intentionally bombed a school in his district last Tuesday and killed 14 children. Bishop Macram Max Gassis accused the government of trying to kill off the country's Roman Catholic minority. "If you destroy the fruit, you will have no more trees tomorrow," Gassis said.

President Clinton described the bombing an outrage and said in a statement that such events have become commonplace in Sudan's 17-year civil war, which has claimed 2 million lives.

The official Sudan News Agency quoted the foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, as saying if government bombs did kill children, it was an accident of war, because rebel fighters had amassed near the elementary school.

The religious freedom commission, which is to take up abuses of religion in Russia and China later in the year, has appealed to Clinton to prohibit the Chinese state oil company and others from using US capital markets to finance projects in Sudan.

The Treasury Department insists that existing sanctions against Sudan cannot apply to capital markets. Sudan is under US sanctions both for allegedly exporting terrorism and abuse of its Christian minority.

In view of Treasury's position, Commission members have said they plan to meet with experts and market managers to explore "voluntary adoption of human rights and religious-freedom criteria" for entry into US stock market.

In addition, the commission has appointed a task force to monitor plans by China National Oil Co. to raise money through a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

PetroChina, owned by the company, is expected to proceed with an initial public offering in excess of $5 billion in the next several weeks, said Roger Robinson Jr., a former National Security Council director, now chairman of the William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy.

Chinese investment in the 940-mile pipeline from Heglid in southern Sudan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, completed in September, is part of the state oil company's largest overseas venture. The Chinese oil company also helped build a refinery in Sudan. Robinson said the commission needs to evaluate whether the Chinese IPO can ensure that money raised in US markets are not diverted to the oil company's project in Sudan.

The religious freedom commission was set up to advise the State Department and the White House on protection of religious freedom around the world. Organized under a 1998 law that arose partly out of rising congressional unease about alleged persecution of Christians abroad, it is headed by Rabbi David Saperstein and George Washington University Law School Dean Michael K. Young and includes people of Christian, Muslim and Baha'i faiths.

Under the law that created the panel, the State Department has designated China, Iran, Iraq, Burma and Sudan as "countries of particular concern" for religious freedom. That designation subjects them to diplomatic and economic sanctions. The department also lists Serbia and the Taliban movement that rules most of Afghanistan as "particularly severe violators of religious freedom."