Attachment to 00-C 09
January 24, 2000
Mr. James Burton
Chief Executive Officer
California Public Employees Retirement System
400 P Street
Box 942701
Sacramento, CA 94229
Dear Mr. Burton:
We wish to bring the unfolding human rights catastrophe in Sudan to your urgent attention,
and
raise the possibility that your Pension Fund may be unwittingly empowering the regime directly
responsible for it.
Specifically, we wish to note the activities of Talisman Energy Inc. (Talisman) and China
National Petroleum Company (CNPC), the two principal sources of the regime’s revenue.
Talisman, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has invested approximately $750 million in
the regime’s principal consortium for oil revenues, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Project
(“the Project”), and holds 25% of its shares. CNPC has invested $1.5-$2 billion in the Project,
and holds 40% of its shares.
Oil revenues have insulated the Khartoum regime from international pressure to negotiate a
just
peace. Furthermore, regime officials have explicitly acknowledged that these oil revenues have
been — and will increasingly be — dedicated to prosecuting its side of the conflict. In addition,
just weeks ago international journalists observed Khartoum’s Antonov bombers using
Talisman’s civilian airstrip. The U.S. House of Representatives, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, and
the East African Catholic Bishops Conference have all recently denounced the regime’s military
operations in south and central Sudan as “genocide.” The State Department has recently declared
the regime responsible for “egregious” religious persecution.
As an expression of our view of present conditions in Sudan and the activities of Talisman
and
CNPC, we enclose the letter sent to President Clinton on December 9 by more than two hundred
religious and civic leaders. We further enclose the powerful attachment to that letter, the
Washington Post editorial of November 15, as
well as a letter from Representative Frank Wolf
(R-VA) to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt regarding the CNPC
plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange. We also enclose a recent Wall Street Journal
Asia
article which describes CNPC’s efforts to restructure its prospective listing and enter the U.S.
markets through a newly created holding company, “Petro China,” and to conduct an Initial
Public Offering for this new entity in the range of $5-$10 billion.
We write to urge you in the strongest terms to divest any Talisman holdings you may have
and,
should it become available, to avoid any purchase of “Petro China” stock. In our view, to do
otherwise would cause your Pension Fund to help underwrite the world’s most egregious
practitioner of terrorism, deliberate starvation, religious persecution, slavery and literal genocide.
CNPC and its U.S. investment bank reportedly intend to represent to prospective investors that
all IPO proceeds raised by Petro China will be directed solely toward its energy development
operations in China. Nevertheless, the fungibility of money and the scale of CNPC’s activities in
Sudan thoroughly undermine the credibility of this restructuring effort.
It is significant that the value of Talisman shares have fallen by more than 20%
during the past
few months in the face of an active disinvestment campaign supported by many of the signatories
of the December 9 letter, and following media reports on Talisman’s involvement in Sudan. We
believe that investors who have recently sold their Talisman shares have prudently understood
that the company’s intransigent support of the regime has put its operations in Sudan at high risk
of immediate military reprisal and of ultimate expropriation when, as is inevitable, the present
regime falls.
In addition to the concerns raised with respect to CNPC’s current financial condition in two
Financial Times articles of 23 December (see the attached), it is also likely that Petro
China will
face a divestment campaign similar to the one directed against Talisman if this holding company,
or CNPC itself, proceeds with its multi-billion dollar IPO.
In sum, we are as determined to end the genocide in Sudan as were those who ended
apartheid in
South Africa, and we are thus determined that Talisman and CNPC, or a related holding
company, must be held financially, legally and morally accountable for their present relations
with, and support of, the regime in Sudan. We reiterate that the actions we urge you to take are
based on our conviction that any direct or indirect material support for the Khartoum regime,
particularly in the form of new oil revenues, will result in the perpetuation of a civil war that has
already claimed the lives of more than two million Sudanese Christians and traditional African
believers, and has displaced at least five million more from their homes and land.
We urge you to act on this basic principle.
Respectfully,
The Rt. Reverend Keith L. Ackerman
Bishop
Episcopal Diocese of Quincy
Commissioner John Busby
National Commander
The Salvation Army
Charles W. Colson
Founder
Prison Fellowship Ministries
Rabbi Irving Greenberg
President
Jewish Life Network
Diane L. Knippers
President
Institute on Religion and Democracy
Richard Land
President, Ethics & Religious Liberty
Commission, Southern Baptist Convention
Nina Shea
Director
Center for Religious Freedom
Commissioner, U.S. Commission On International Religious Freedom
His Excellency, Bishop Paride Taban
Catholic Diocese of Torit
Eastern Equatoria, Sudan
The Reverend Chuck Singleton
Senior Pastor, Loveland Church
Rancho Cucamonga, California
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