Tanzania to send 1000 peacekeepers to Darfur

September 20, 2007 (DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania) — Tanzania will send 1,000 troops to Darfur as part of the African Union and U.N. peacekeeping force, President Jakaya Kikwete said.

President Kikwete told the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a meeting in New York Tuesday that Tanzania would like to help find a lasting solution to the political impasse in the western Sudan region where more than 200,000 people have died in three years of conflict.

However, he said the country would only dispatch the force once the AU and UN completed the necessary logistics to facilitate the move. Initial arrangement was for the joint force to be operational by the first week of next month.

The U.N. Security Council approved plans on July 31 for a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for the vast, war-battered region in western Sudan.

The deployment of the joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force faces delays, however, due to a lack of aviation, transport and logistics units, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said.

More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed -a charge it denies.

Rodolphe Adada, chief of the joint mission to Darfur, said this month that nations have already committed more than the 26,000 required troops for the force.

Sudan agreed to the force only after a lengthy delay and under international pressure. Sudan had argued in part that outside intervention would inflame sentiments in the largely Muslim country.

(AP/ST)