6 African nations pledge 12,000 troops to Darfur – AU official
August 13, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) — Six African countries have given written pledges to contribute more than 12,000 troops to an African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur, a senior AU official said Monday.
Pledges received from Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Malawi and Senegal amount to 16 battalions or more than 12,000 troops at the rate of 800 for each battalion, said Mahmoud Kane, head of the African Union’s Darfur Integrated Task Force.
“We believe it is a positive response from Africa,” said Kane.
Informal pledges were also made by Tanzania, Cameroon and Uganda though they didn’t indicate exactly how many soldiers they planned to contribute, the official added.
AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said Sunday African countries had given enough pledges to make up the joint U.N.-African Union operation for Darfur of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police the U.N. Security Council authorized July 31.
The Sudanese government is adamantly opposed to non-Africans playing any major role in the hybrid U.N.-AU operation.
Some 7,000 African peacekeepers from Zambia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa are currently serving in Darfur.
Nearly four years of fighting between African rebel forces and the Khartoum government and allied militias in the western Sudanese region has forced more than 2.5 million from their homes and resulted in the death of at least 200,000 people.
(AP)