Japan to send first official to Sudan for peacekeeping

Aug 26, 2005 (Tokyo) — Japan said Friday it will send a government official to join United Nations peacekeeping operations in Sudan, where the formally pacifist country had considered deploying troops.

Yusuke Kudo, a foreign ministry official handling the Middle East, would join the UN Mission in Sudan from September and stay until June next year, a ministry official said.

“He will be engaged in information analysis in Khartoum as the first personnel from Japan to join the UN mission in Sudan,” the official said.

Japan said in April it would offer 100 million dollars in aid to Sudan to help rebuild the troubled African nation after a peace deal ended its 21-year north-south civil war.

But press reports said Japan, which is officially pacifist, has judged that Sudan was too dangerous to contribute UN peacekeeping troops. A separate conflict is underway in the western province of Darfur.

Japan has increasingly looked for ways to show its global role in addition to contributing aid, which has long been the key tool of its foreign policy.

Japan has about 600 troops in Iraq on a humanitarian mission in its first military deployment since 1945 to a country where there is fighting.

Japan also sent about 950 troops to Indonesia this year for tsunami relief in its biggest post-World War II deployment and disbursed 500 million dollars in aid after the disaster.

AFP/ST