Rice lobbies, but Congress aides say budget stretched
Dec 17, 2005 (WASHINGTON) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched a behind-the-scenes lobbying effort this week to persuade Congress to appropriate $50 million in funding for an African Union effort to halt genocidal killings in Sudan’s Darfur region.
But congressional aides said yesterday that Rice’s attempt may have been a case of too little, too late. They said lawmakers have no plan to add extra funding for Darfur to a federal budget that is stretched thin by Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, the Iraq war, and planning for avian flu.
”It is at the eleventh hour,” said John Scofield, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. ”At this point, we’re about ready to turn out the lights” on budget commitments this year.
The apparent decision not to add new funds for helicopters and other support comes more than a year after the House of Representatives voted unanimously for a resolution that called the killings in Darfur ”genocide” and urged the Bush administration to consider intervening in the conflict. An estimated 2 million people have been displaced and hundreds of thousands have died from malnutrition, disease, and violent attacks in Darfur since 2003, when Sudan’s government brutally suppressed a revolt and allegedly worked with local militias to wipe out the villages of tribes associated with the rebels.
The 7,000-strong African Union force is the only protection for survivors in Darfur, but the force lacks basic equipment and has found itself increasingly under attack.
Yesterday, Scofield and two other congressional aides said the major obstacle to securing funding for the African Union troops was that Rice failed to make a formal request for the money through the Office of Management and Budget, as is custom.
”A letter from the secretary is nice, but in the budget world, it’s not a formal request,” Scofield said, adding that money for Darfur could be taken out of the $179 million that the administration had set aside for other peacekeeping missions in 2006.
A State Department official said that additional funding is needed badly, and that two letters that Rice sent Thursday to the chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees should have been sufficient. He said lawmakers are looking for an excuse not to fund the mission.
”Congress can do this if it wants,” said one State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ”Time is running out. Congress needs to act quickly.”
In her letters, Rice asked lawmakers to set aside ”at least $50 million” for Darfur in a bill they are attempting to hammer out this weekend.
”I have discussed this matter with others in the administration and can assure you that taking immediate action to meet this unanticipated expense is of the highest priority,” Rice wrote in a letter to Senator Thad Cochran, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, according to a copy obtained by the Globe.
Rice’s $50 million request represents roughly a third of what the force will need to continue operating for the next five months; the European Union is responsible for most of the rest.
Said Djinnit, the head of peacekeeping for the 53-nation African bloc, told reporters in Ethiopia yesterday that the force could run out of funds by April if donors do not respond.
The African force, made up of soldiers from Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Ghana, and other nations, has about 5,600 military observers in Sudan and 1,300 civilian police. The Bush administration, backed by a bipartisan movement of Christian groups and African-American lawmakers, has repeatedly highlighted the need to help Darfur by enabling the African Union troops to protect survivors in the refugee camps.
Some of its soldiers have been killed or kidnapped by better-armed militiamen and rebel fighters. Recent months have seen a surge in violence against civilians, aid groups, and the African Union soldiers.
Yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators urged their House counterparts to provide the funding, which had been quietly dropped from an earlier appropriations bill.
”The AU troops, which have succeeded at deterring violence where they have been deployed, are stretched thin and have recently come under attack,” said the letter, signed by Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, Jon S. Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, and Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.
Some supporters of greater Western involvement in Darfur urged lawmakers to step up on the issue.
”The president has said we’re in a situation of genocide” in Darfur, said Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group. ”They should recognize the importance to the US national security interests and provide the funding.”
(The Boston Globe)