this before. I would like you to speak to that and maybe speak to the Sudanese government, too. Secretary POWELL. As you know, Mr. Chairman, Senator Danforth led a mission for us and went over there a couple of times and came back with a four-point plan that looked like a road forward, and we told the Sudanese that, "If you want a better relationship with the United States, this kind of action simply has to stop." And then you saw we got something of an agreement, which was a step in the right direction. The Sudanese have been helpful with respect to intelligence sharing and shutting down some of the terrorist activities that were at least officed or headquartered in the Sudan, and so we thought we were moving on a somewhat positive track, considering the difficulties in this region, and then this helicopter incident took place. I have no evidence to suggest that chemical weapons were spread at that time, but, nevertheless, we went immediately to the Sudanese government and said, "That is it. We stop. We are not going forward. You do not understand. We were serious. You have got to stop activity like this or it stops. This has to be reciprocal. We do something, you do something. But it has to be permanent." They have now come back and investigated the incident and told us that it should not have happened, it was an error, failure of command, and they have entered into an agreement with us which we have now put before the SPLA that this kind of activity will not take place, will stop. Mr. Chairman, you and I both have been around this track before, but what we have communicated to the Sudanese government is that we will hold you accountable, and the process of moving forward, of any opportunities for better relationship will come to a dead halt with the continuation of this kind of activity. PROBLEMS FACING AFRICA Mr. WOLF. Good. Well, thank you. Several weeks ago Ted Koppel did a series on the Congo, Eastern Congo-Goma, Bokago, and others. It was very moving. For ABC to be dropping Koppel for Letterman, I do not understand. I mean, he did an incredible job. He went in there, spent a lot of time. Great, great show. I do not know if you happened to see it. In any event, 2,500 people are dead each day in the Congo. They have lost almost three million people. My sense is we now have to, in this Administration, put together a group of people who are literally the best experts in the world to shape our policy be toward Africa. There are so many problems. You have diamonds with regard to alQaeda, Sierra Leone, you have the problem with Guinea, you have Charles Taylor. I mean, we should be looking at it. What do we do. We should be re-flagging all of the ships coming out of Liberia with the Liberia flag. That would bring down the Charles Taylor Gov ernment. What should our policy be with regard to the Liberian flag? What should our policy be on the diamond issue? What should our policy be with regard to food aid and development? By the way, let me congratulate you for the President's appointment of Congressman Tony Hall. There's not a more capable and committed individual in this Congress, or frankly in the country, than Hall. Mr. Hall will do a great job and make you very proud. But how do we deal with debt forgiveness? We need to forgive debt, but we need to do it in a way that when the debt is forgiven there is a reciprocity with regard to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, that some things go back to the people. Africa is ablaze, it is afire, I mean, from AIDS, to the Congo, to Sudan, to Sierra Leone, to Guinea. We have to step back, and consinder that what we are doing, as a country, and as the West, really has not worked. The value of a life in Goma has the same value as a life in Berlin, or in London, or in Beijing. You do not have to make me a commitment, but I would like to think we could kind of step back, put together some of the very best minds, new thinking, new ideas. How do we do aid? What do we do with promoting democracy? How do we deal with debt forgiveness? What do we do? Also, I am concerned about terrorism. Terrorism is beginning to move. Charles Taylor has sheltered terrorists. Charles Taylor's people go up to Libya. But we need to really rethink what we are doing in Africa. If you look at the Ted Koppel piece on "Nightline," "Five Days in Eastern Congo," he makes the point again, 2,500 deaths a day. That is like the World Trade Center every single day. Many go into the bush and literally lay down and they die, and many who are not dying are living a life that is almost as bad as we can possibly imagine. What are your thoughts about the Congo and about how we should step back and maybe take a look at this whole continent called Africa with regard to rethinking some of the policy? Secretary POWELL. The situation in the Congo is every bit the tragedy that you say it is, Mr. Chairman, and Ted Koppel did just a magnificent job of documenting it in his program. Mr. WOLF. I wonder if Letterman has ever been to Goma. Probably has not. Secretary POWELL. Probably not. Mr. WOLF. Maybe he will go. Secretary POWELL. I think I will stay out of the ABC- Secretary POWELL. It is a tragic situation. We are working with President Kabila and President Kagame and the other leaders in the region to try to bring an end to this conflict, and working with the U.N. with respect to putting in the peacekeepers and others necessary to try to help these desperate, desperate people. We are dealing with every one of these issues that you mentioned in as effective way as we can figure out. It is always wise to step back and take a look at the overall picture, but I find my day dealing with the individual pieces that won't wait for the overall picture to fall in place. We have been aggressive with respect to HIV/AIDS. We have taken the lead there. We have taken the lead in speaking out sharply against people like President Mugabe in Zimbabwe. My speech in South Africa last year made it clear that this kind of behavior and this kind of political action is no longer acceptable if countries wanted to progress into the 21st Century. Mr. Mugabe is an anachronism with the way he is going about the running of his country. I think we have been forthcoming with respect to trying to do something about the diamond trade and supporting actions up in Congress with respect to getting the diamond trade under control because it is such a source of income for the most evil purposes in Africa. So on each one of the issues you have mentioned we are working on those issues, but we can always benefit from stepping back and see if they are so integrated that we can come up with a single, overall approach that would deal with all of them. You do not get the kind of attention with respect to issues in Africa that you will in Afghanistan or Bosnia or anywhere else. You are quite right. Not only 2,500 people a day dying in the Eastern Congo, but look at how many are dying with respect to HIV/AIDS. The president of Botswana was in my office the other day and we were talking about it. It is a country of 1.6 million people with an infection rate of 38.9 percent. The average life expectancy has dropped from 69 to 44. This is an absolute pandemic. It is a tragedy. Of all 15-year-olds in Botswana, 50 percent are infected. It cries out for more attention. It cries out for the whole world to do something about it. The whole world tends to have a difficult time figuring out how to get their hands around the problem. So I do not deny in the slightest way, Mr. Chairman, that you have a good idea in terms of let's step back and how do we take a look at this in a more holistic way. I am willing to explore that with you and find out what we might be able to do. Mr. WOLF. Good. Secretary POWELL. But we are trying to work the individual problems every day, as well. Mr. WOLF. Well, you have to. I had the Library of Congress do a paper, which I will send to you, on this issue. I think you have to continue to meet those needs as they come, but you have got to get a group of top people, experts who will care, and come in and see if there's something a little bit different we can do. Or maybe what is being done is correct, although I find it hard to believe what the world has done for the last 20 years has been successful, because if that is success, my goodness, I would hate to see failure. But I think such an effort can make an impact. I will send you that paper. Mr. Serrano. COLOMBIA AND U.S. INVOLVEMENT Mr. SERRANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I want to just spend some more time with you on this issue of Colombia, which troubles so many people. Last year, when you came before the committee, I expressed to you my concern, and after correcting me on calling upon plan Colombia and changing to its new name, you assured us-and I believe that you meant that-that this would be for counter-narcotic trafficking and growing issues and for democracy building and strengthening the law enforcement and judiciary. Backing up a second, prior to you coming before me, transcript of the hearing shows that I expressed the same concerns to Secretary Albright about Colombia. She went on to say the that Administration was involved with President Pastrana in trying to help him deal with the needs, the real needs of the FARC, and other groups, and that she and that Administration were trying to make President Pastrana understand that the bigger problem in Colombia was how to change the society so that certain people did not feel left out. Now, I should have prefaced my comments by saying that we are all fans of President Pastrana and we are hopeful that he is successful, but I think that those of us who feared a military involvement may not have been totally wrong. What we are hearing now, what we are reading now, is that we are now going to go and get involved in protecting oil fields or oil pipelines, and that we basically have declared again the narco folks, the FARCS, terrorists. Now, I am not suggesting that they are or they are not. I am only suggesting that after September 11th we Americans shiver at the word "terrorist" and identify with a group of people we want to get rid of. There's not a single American who says we should not get rid of every terrorist. But now it seems to some that the word "terrorist" could be loosely used to allow us involvement that we should be analyzing in different ways. This is a civil war. You and I grew up with a situation militarily where there was a civil war that we got involved in, and we honor all the folks that were there, but we spend so much time now wondering, you know, what was the involvement and what the involvement should have been. All that to say, Mr. Secretary, that we have to be careful not to get involved in Colombia in a civil war that we can't get out of. Secondly, if we have accomplished one thing, it is that people who usually opposed our involvement in Latin America have been kind of quiet for the last "X" amount of years because we have not been behaving that way. We may wake a lot of folks up in Latin America who now feel that, "Here they come again using their military force." I do not know who the good guys are in Colombia. Maybe that is where I open myself up to getting hit over the head by you. You do that in a very diplomatic way, I know. I do not know who they are. I know there's a government, a government that still cannot get rid of its involvement with the paramilitary group. I know there's narco traffickers on all sides of the issue. I know there's an insurgency group that brings pain to the people in the name of trying to bring a change in government. I know governments who traditionally bring pain to the people also. So I cannot figure it out, and I try to read it every day in English and in Spanish. I am wondering how some folks are figuring out somewhere else. So could you tell us how close are we to military involvement, and could you tell us what would be the reason for allowing our troops to be used in Colombia? Secretary POWELL. There are no plans that I am aware of—and I think I am aware of all plans-that involve the possible sending or use of American military units to Colombia to deal with the problem they have. Colombia is a friend to the United States. President Pastrana we all admire. There will be a new president by late summer. Colombia is fighting for its democracy. It is fighting for its right to have a legitimate, democratic form of government. It is under assault by narco traffickers, and it is also under assault by organiza tions such as the FARC and ELN, especially the FARC that has been after Colombian leadership for many, many years. President Pastrana boldly tried to resolve this with the creation of the safe havens in the hope that this would encourage the FARC and the ELN to negotiate seriously. There was doubt that this would be successful. And President Pastrana, after giving it his all, came to the conclusion that they would not negotiate in good faith, that this is not the solution to the problem, and he ended the safe havens. He is now faced with having to deal with these organizations which we have designated as terrorist organizations. Our policies to this point-as I have said to you last year, we have been faithful to that have been to use Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative, or ACI, as it is called, for counter-narcotic purposes, and we have stayed within the letter of the law with respect to that. This year we continue to stay within the letter of the law, but we introduced a new element to protect the pipeline, because this was a pipeline that was being shut down on a regular basis and was affecting the basic economy of Colombia. It was reasonable for a democratic government to be able to protect the pipelines. We did not think that this did violence to anything we have said to the Congress previously and it was a smart thing to do. But the safe havens are now gone, and President Pastrana, and I believe whoever will replace President Pastrana, is in a conflict with the FARC. There are some things we might be able to do with the ELN. I believe it is reasonable for us to take a look at our policy in light of this changed circumstance, and that is what we are doing. It may be necessary-and the President has made no decision, has received no recommendation-it may be necessary for us to give the government of Colombia additional support that is outside the counter-narcotics facet to enable them to deal with this threat to their survival as a nation, this threat to their economic wellbeing, and once we have completed this review, we will come up to the Congress and ask for whatever we believe is necessary. Right now we are staying within the limit of the law, but it is clear that the kinds of things that we are being asked to provide to assist the Colombian government, such as more intelligence information, things of that nature, that will quickly run into the wall, the legislative wall that is there, and that is what we are examining what more is it appropriate to give them so that they can defend their nation? We also have made it clear to President Pastrana and will make it clear to the future president of Colombia that if paramilitary forces are given a free hand, this is destructive of our effort to help you, and we particularly mean that with respect to AUC, as it is called, the umbrella organization. We made it clear to them, and they have assured us that they understand it and they are not going to give the paramilitary a free hand, because that is also destructive of their democracy. So this is what we are looking at now. We are reviewing our policies to see what it would be appropriate to do in order to assist this |