Sudan asks Indonesia to double it small contribution in Darfur force

March 15, 2008 (DAKAR) – Sudan asked Indonesia to double its small contribution in the predominantly African hybrid peacekeeping force.

Indonesia will deploy in Darfur 140 civilian police to a 26000 joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force, which, if fully deployed, would be the world’s largest operation of its kind — to help end five years of rape and slaughter in the vast Sudanese desert region.

“Sudan wants Indonesia to play more roles in peacekeeping efforts in Darfur,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the closing of the 11th Summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Dakar.

Yudhoyono was speaking to the press at the end of his meeting with the Sudanese president Omer al-Bashir on the sideline of the Islamic summit.

He said that the Indonesian government was happy to play its roles in a peacekeeping effort as long as its forces were under the United Nations peacekeeping force.

The president also said that Indonesia fully believed that the Sudanese government was able to resolve the outbreak of conflicts in Darfur.

Indonesia hoped that the overall solutions taken to create peace would really bring betterment to the Sudanese people.

Sudan had resisted a push for U.N. peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed African Union force now in Darfur, where 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, sent about 1,000 troops to a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon last year to enforce a cease-fire between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah.

(ST)