Yes, internal distribution of
PR. Most of the items commonly put into these sitemaps (privacy policy, contact us, etc) do not need to be reached by every page on the site. When it comes to internal page rank, Google looks at these links to determine what pages of your site are the most important. This hierarchy can influence how often Google crawls pages, and may have an effect in final rankings.
At the very least, these links should have a nofollow attribute. Ideally, normal navigation should make it easy and intuitive for users to find the pages they are looking for. No flash, no JavaScript only navigation.