Poland says to dispatch 400 to Sudan-Chad border
January 12, 2008 (WARSAW) — Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw Komorowski last Friday has voiced Warsaw’s intentions to deploy 400 country’s peacekeepers the European Union force for Chad and the Central African Republic.
The European Union military force for two countries neighboring Sudan’s troubled Darfur region has a UN Security Council mandate to help back up some 300 UN police officers sent to monitor camps for over 230,000 Darfur refugees.
The budget of the Polish force will reach 28 million Euros. “The servicemen will be in Darfur for a year, but there are no plans to extend their stay there,” he said.
Other countries to send troops to Darfur and adjacent Chad and the Central African republic include Austria, Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden.
Belgium, Poland and France agreed to contribute needed helicopters and other means of air transport, meaning planning for the mission can now be completed, officials said after a meeting of E.U. military experts. The first soldiers could be on the ground in early February, they said.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin, speaking in Strasbourg, France said his country pledged Friday to offer five additional helicopters and about 2,000 soldiers. He said Belgium would send two aircraft and Italy would provide a field military hospital.
A Brussels-based Polish diplomat said Poland has agreed to provide two helicopters and increase its contribution from 350 to 400 troops.
The 3,500-strong force was supposed to begin deploying in early December along the two countries’ borders with Sudan, but it has fallen short of the contributions from member countries that Ireland’s Lt. Gen. Pat Nash had said were needed.
The force is aimed at helping limit possible spillover from the fighting in Darfur and complementing a planned U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force of 26,000 soldiers for Darfur.
About 234,000 Darfur refugees, along with 178,000 displaced eastern Chadians and 43,000 Central Africans also uprooted by strife and rebellion in the north of their country, are housed in camps in the region.
(ST)