Sudan envoy J. Scott Gration, pictured in Nairobi on March 9, didn't get many back slaps on the Hill today. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

If special envoy to Sudan J. Scott Gration expected to take a victory lap on the Hill today, he was sorely disappointed.

Gration appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to highlight his progress ahead of January's referendum on independence for southern Sudan. While he acknowledged that the vote is fast approaching and serious problems remain, Gration exuded confidence and said he has all the resources he needs.

"The president has been superb and given me everything I asked for," he said.

But the half-dozen senators who showed up for the hearing appeared frustrated at times by Gration's lack of specifics, and they subjected him to polite by insistent lines of questioning. After perfunctory praise for the former major general, they took aim at last month's problematic elections and Gration's planning for the January vote, which will almost certainly lead southern Sudan to break away and has the potential to ignite a civil war.

April's elections, the first in 24 years in Sudan, were marred by what the White House called "serious irregularities." The Sudan People's Liberation Movement boycotted the vote in the north because of alleged voter intimidation as well as logistical problems.

Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., was careful not to lay the blame at Gration's feet, but he did little to mask his disappointment with U.S. achievements in Sudan.

"I don't think things have progressed as much as people would have hoped," he said. Current policy, Kerry added, seems bent on ensuring the "least bad disaster" rather than achieving outright success.

Democrat Russ Feingold asked Gration what the U.S. would do if Khartoum meddles in the independence vote. Gration answered vaguely, saying in part that "rigging, messing with or destabilizing are things that we would condemn."

Feingold pressed him again, and Gration countered that he didn't want to publicly tip his hand. It was only after the senior senator from Wisconsin asked a third time that Gration admitted that further isolation was a key component of that contingency plan and said he could share more details in private.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., was nonplussed by the timeline Gration has laid out ahead of the January referendum. The November deadline for determining the highly contested north-south boundaries in an independent southern Sudan, he said, is too close to the January election.

The Enough Project, the anti-genocide arm of the Center for American Progress, has long taken issue with Gration's preference for carrots over sticks when dealing with Khartoum. The group continued Feingold's line of attack at the hearing.

"It is perplexing to hear the special envoy maintain that he has all the resources he currently needs to do his job in both south Sudan and Darfur," the Enough Project said in a press release after the hearing. "The Obama administration should introduce the consequences and pressures it promised for the lack of measurable progress and continued backsliding on key benchmarks."