Rwanda to send troops to Sudan’s Darfur this week

KIGALI, Aug 9, 2004 (Xinhua) — Rwandan troops are going to leave for Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region this week to intervene and rescue the needy there, a state-run paper reported here Monday.

“We are irritated because people are dying and we have been through this same situation of turmoil,” Foreign Minister Charles Muligande was quoted as saying.

The minister said that the world ought to act promptly to see to it that no other genocide carried while other people are looking on.

The United Nations considers Darfur as a place with the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world, which has left up to 10, 000 people dead and some 1 million displaced since rebels took up arms in early 2003.

On July 30, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution, giving Sudan 30 days to disarm the Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, which was blamed for atrocities in Darfur, or face international sanctions.

About the recent comment of the Sudanese government that it doesn’t need any foreign troops, Muligande said that the warning was concerned to the western countries and that it had nothing to do with nominated countries to send contingent troops.

“Both the UN and African Union (AU) asked Rwanda to send about 145 troops in the first phase and other 155 would come from Nigeria,” the minister said.

“The AU want to create a bigger force comprised of 2,000 of Protection Force to the AU monitors,” Muligande said, adding that the country is able to send more troops that would ease the troubled humanitarian situation in Darfur.

The world’s time-consuming reaction to the crisis in western Sudan signals Rwanda’s experience during the 1994 genocide.

The massacre was organized by the Hutu-extremist government then in power aiming to wipe out the central African country’s Tutsi minority, and more than 500,000 people, mostly minority Tutsis and politically moderate members of the Hutu majority, were killed in the genocide.

President Paul Kagame had earlier warned that Rwandan troops would not go to Darfur to protect the UN observers when the Sudanese minority people are being killed by the Janjaweed militia.

The UN and AU delegates are meeting in Sudanese capital Khartoum to access the situation and discuss with the Sudan government on the deployment of foreign troops.

The Sudan government also pledge last week to disarm the Janjaweed militia.