Japan mulls peacekeeping mission in southern Sudan

February 17, 2008 (TOKYO) — Japan’s government is considering sending peacekeeping troops to southern Sudan to help implement a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of war, a report said Saturday.

But the possible mission would not join the UN-African Union force operating separately to stop the bloodshed in Darfur in the west, the mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun said without naming sources.

Japanese troops would be part of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), which is coordinating UN activities in the country, for the implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended a 21-year civil war, it said.

Their tasks would include humanitarian assistance, protection of human rights and could also involve tasks such as removing landmines, the report said. It did not mention the size of the possible Japanese mission.

The United Nations says the war killed more than two million people, uprooted four million and made 600,000 flee the country.

The Yomiuri said Tokyo was looking to raise its profile in international security as it prepares to host a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations in July.

Japan is the only G8 country that does not contribute troops to the UNMIS.

The government was unavailable for comment on the report Saturday.

The Yomiuri said the government has judged it could send troops to Sudan under the nation’s peacekeeping law, given that an accord has already been signed there.

In 2003 then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi took the landmark step of sending troops to Iraq under a special law, the first time since World War II that Japan has deployed troops to a country where fighting was under way.

Koizumi withdrew the 600-strong troops before leaving office in 2006 but maintained the Kuwait-based air mission, which flies goods and supplies into the war-torn country.

(AFP)