Rwandan troops to leave soon to Sudan’s Darfur
KIGALI, Rwanda, Oct 23, 2004 (Radio Rwanda) — Two hundred and thirty seven Rwanda Defence Forces will soon be sent for a peacekeeping mission in the troubled Sudan region of Darfur. This was said today by the director of research and development in the RDF Col Charles Karamba.
He said that Rwandan are ready for airlifting as long as the necessary infrastructure was in place in Darfur. The troops will join another contingent of 155 Rwandan troops already in Darfur. He added that their mandate will be monitoring and protecting cease-fire observers on the ground in Darfur as he further explains:
Karamba indicated “the mandate has not changed. This is simply an expanded African mission in Sudan in terms of numbers or size. So in that respect, we have been officially requested to send an initial company of 196 troops plus another 41 that are supposed to augment the original company which went there of 155. So that company also becomes 196. In full, we are going to be having a total of 392.”
He further added “this mission is kind of divided in two. The military component of this mission is in two groups that is the monitors and then the protection force. Rwanda’s role has been of a protection force and the mandate and the mission has not changed.”
It is supposed to monitor and observe compliance with the humanitarian cease-fire agreement of 8 April 2004 and all such agreements in the future. And then secondly, to assist in the process of confidence building and thirdly to contribute to a secure environment for the delivery of material relief and beyond that the return of IDPs and refugees to their homes in order to assist in the level of compliance of all parties to the humanitarian cease-fire agreement and of course, to contribute to the improvement of the overall security situation throughout Darfur.
News reaching says that the United States has sent an air force members from Europe to prepare for a two-week air lift mission of foreign peacekeepers to Darfur. When is the actual airlifting gong to start and is it true the US members are already in Kigali?
Karamba answered “the strategic lift is something that the AU is supposed to undertake like making sure that the necessary requirement on the ground to receive the troops is concerned”.
For the AU, is been working out the modalities of the airlifting of our troops as a portion of other forces from Africa that will be invited to participate in this Darfur mission so it is in this respect that the Western powers working together with the United States included are supposed to carry out this strategic lift of our troops.
Information reaching us from Darfur indicates that a lot of work is being done to be able to out receive troops in the shortest possible time and we are monitoring it very closely and we hope that in the shortest possible time our troops will troops will be taking of for Darfur.
Material from the BBC Monitoring service