Nigerian senate approves deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan

ABUJA, Aug 19 (AFP) — The Nigerian senate voted Thursday to approve a decision by President Olusegun Obasanjo to make 1,500 troops available for an African Union peacekeeping mission to Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur.

“The senate has approved the president’s request on the deployment of troops to Sudan,” Senate President Adolphus Wabara confirmed after the vote.

Some senators spoke out against the decision, calling on their colleagues to wait until next week to allow the assembly’s defence committee to study the plan, but their concerns were overruled in a simple voice vote, AFP saw.

The decision clears the way for Nigeria to send an initial company of 150 soldiers to Sudan to join a similar Rwandan unit already in place, and gives Obasanjo authority to deploy two further 770-strong battalions if necessary.

Khartoum has not yet said whether it will accept a planned 2,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur, where a brutal civil war has left more than 30,000 dead and a million at risk of starvation.

But Sudan is under intense international pressure to demonstrate its ability to protect its citizens ahead of an August 29 deadline imposed by the UN Security Council, after which it could face economic or political sanctions.

Representatives of the Sudanese government, which stands accused of arming a brutal pro-government militia in Darfur, are to hold peace talks with the region’s rebel movements under Obasanjo’s chairmanship in Abuja on Monday.

By publicly winning approval to send a much larger force than initially anticipated, Obasanjo has increased the pressure on his Sudanese counterpart Omar Hassan al-Beshir to endorse the African Union’s intervention.

Fighting erupted between Darfur rebels and pro-grovernment forces in February last year.

The United Nations has since described the situation in Darfur as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” and the pro-government Janjaweed militia has been accused of killing and persecuting civilians.