Bush Signs Bill Allowing Sudan Divestment

January 1, 2008
Bush Signs Bill Allowing Sudan Divestment
NY Times, By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
CRAWFORD, Tex. —

President Bush signed legislation on Monday allowing state and local governments to cut investment ties with companies doing business in Sudan, even as he expressed concerns that the bill could interfere with his right to set foreign policy.
The measure, called the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act, is aimed at pressuring Sudan to end the violence in the Darfur region, where 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million driven from their homes in a four-year conflict that Mr. Bush has termed a genocide.
The bill, which passed both houses of Congress unanimously, makes it easier for mutual funds and private pension fund managers to sell their investments and allows states to prohibit debt financing for companies that do business in Sudan. It also requires companies seeking contracts with the federal government to certify that they are not doing business in Sudan.
“I share the deep concern of the Congress over the continued violence in Darfur perpetrated by the government of Sudan and rebel groups,” Mr. Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch here, where he planned to celebrate the new year with his wife, Laura, and some friends.
But the administration has expressed reservations about the bill, and Mr. Bush’s signature was accompanied by a proviso known as a signing statement, in which he said he was reserving the authority to overrule state and local divestment decisions if they conflicted with foreign policy. The statement said the measure “risks being interpreted as insulating” state and local divestment actions from federal oversight.
Mr. Bush has long sought an effective way to press Sudan to end the violence in Darfur, and he has been under intense pressure from human rights advocates to do more. The administration imposed stiff economic sanctions on the Sudanese government at the end of May, trying to force it to accept a United Nations-led peacekeeping force.
On Monday, formal authority was transferred from the current African Union peacekeeping force to a joint United Nations-African Union mission. But advocates complained that the deployment was delayed for months because of bureaucratic foot-dragging by the Sudanese government.
The peacekeeping force will be staffed far below the levels set by the United Nations Security Council when it voted unanimously in July to deploy 26,000 troops to try to stop the violence in Darfur.
As planned, the peacekeeping force would have been the largest such effort in the world, costing about $2 billion in its first year and drawing on military and police forces from the African Union and the United Nations.
Instead, after months of wrangling, the force that made its debut on Monday had 9,000 troops, United Nations officials said. Experts worry that it may never get to the level where it will make any difference in the region’s troubles.
“What we are seeing and hearing is a reprisal of their same stall-and-delay tactics,” said Allyn Brooks-LaSure, a spokesman for the Save Darfur Coalition.
The coalition, an umbrella group of more than 170 organizations, has been waging a “Divest in Darfur” campaign aimed at big investment companies like Fidelity and Vanguard, highlighted by the question “Is your mutual fund funding genocide?” After a State Department official testified that the divestment bill might not be necessary, the coalition put together a letter-writing campaign urging Mr. Bush to sign it.
“The Congress passed this measure unanimously in both chambers, and I think that sent a strong message to the White House,” Mr. Brooks-LaSure said. “We believe they were right to heed that message.”

Maria Newman contributed reporting.