Zimbabwe to send 34 troops for peacekeeping mission in Sudan

HARARE, April 26 (AFP) — Zimbabwe is contributing 34 soldiers to a 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping force being deployed to support a January peace deal which ended 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan, state television said Tuesday.

A mixed patrol of Ivory Coast and U.N soldiers walk the streets in Abidjan, December 22, 2004. (Reuters).

Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi told the officers to maintain professionalism while on duty there, the television report said, adding that the troops would be expected to leave soon.

Zimbabwe’s defence forces have been involved in other peacekeeping operations in Angola, Mozambique and Rwanda. In 1998, up to 10,000 Zimbabwean troops were deployed to help prop up government troops against a rebel uprising in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998.

The UN Security Council on March 24 approved the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers to shore up the January 9 peace agreement which put an end to the 21-year-old north-south civil war in Sudan, Africa’s largest country.

The war pitted the mainly Christian and animist south against the Muslim-dominated central government based in the north and has left an estimated 1.5 million people dead and four million displaced.