EAC to send peacekeeping troops to Darfur

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 28, 2004 (PANA) — The East African Community (EAC) Heads of
States Summit resolved here Saturday to deploy troops to the
troubled western Sudan region of Darfur to monitor a peace
agreement between the government and rebel forces and not for
interventionist purposes.

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa said the three countries were
awaiting the outcome of the Africa Union-led Darfur peace talks
in Abuja, Nigeria under the chairmanship of the Nigerian
President Olusegun Obasanjo to proceed with their plan.

“If there is any peace to be monitored, we shall be ready. There
must be a process whose implementation we will follow. We are
waiting for the outcome of the Abuja peace talks,” Mkapa told
journalists here Saturday.

The EAC, grouping Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, is holding a three-
day Heads of States Summit here to speed up the implementation of
the EAC Common External Tariffs (CET).

Member states signed the protocol but hitches have delayed
ratification by member states before it becomes operational.

President Mkapa, who was answering questions from journalists on
whether his country was ready to send troops to the troubled
Darfur region, where some 30,000 people have died and 1.2 million
internally displaced after nearly 19 months of fighting, also
stressed that the Sudanese government must accept to welcome the
foreign troops.

The AU is poised to deployed 300 troops to Darfur drawn from
Nigeria and Rwanda to protect some 80 Observers whose assignment
is to oversee the non-violation of a peace deal reached in Chad.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his Ugandan compatriot Yoweri
Museveni also endorsed Mkapa’s sentiments, saying they will only
play by the rules.

Museveni, who has been facing 18 years of rebel insurgency in the
north of Uganda, publicly admitted supporting the rebel Sudanese
Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA).

“As much as we sympathise with the black people in southern
Sudan, we know that the Khartoum government made a mistake by
supporting the (Ugandan rebel) Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA),”
Museveni said, adding, “It was a regrettable mistake they made.”