Russian peacekeepers will leave for Sudan this week

April 17, 2006 (MOSCOW) — Russia will send more than 100 servicemen to Sudan this week to participate in a United Nations peacekeeping operation, the Interfax news agency quoted Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying Monday.

Ivanov told President Vladimir Putin that Russia would begin sending an aviation unit in three days, Interfax reported. He said the Russian contingent would comprise 117 servicemen, pilots and technicians, and four Mi-8 cargo helicopters, and that Moscow will send a planeload of blankets, tents and kitchens.

At the same time, under an agreement with G8 countries, Russia “plans to send to Sudan a military transport plane carrying tents, stoves and blankets for the civilian population”. The minister noted that the Russian contingent in Sudan “will be periodically rotated”.

The U.N. Security Council voted in March 2005 to send 10,700 peacekeepers to southern Sudan to monitor an accord ending a 21-year civil war between the government and rebels, and Russia’s parliament last December approved Putin’s proposal to send some 200 troops, four helicopters and other equipment.

There are also U.N. plans for a peacekeeping force in western Sudan, where more than 2 million people have been uprooted from their homes by violence in the Darfur region, but the Sudanese government has not approved a U.N. deployment.

On Tuesday 18 April the UN commission will check the readiness of the Russian aviation unit to be sent on the peacekeeping mission to Sudan at the army aviation flight personnel combat training and retraining centre in Torzhok, the Russian air force’s press service told ITAR-TASS. The UN representatives will be shown the technical equipment used by the aviation unit.

(ST/AP/TASS)