Germany to send airlift planes to Sudan

BERLIN, Nov 11, 2004 (Expatica) — The German government will seek parliamentary approval to send transport planes to Sudan to airlift African Union peacekeepers serving in the country, Defence Minister Peter Struck said on Thursday.

Struck told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that a parliamentary green light was needed because “danger to German soldiers cannot be ruled out.”

The African Union (AU) has asked for European Union aid in deploying some 3,000 peacekeepers in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

Struck said he expected German Luftwaffe C160 Transall transport jets to be flying missions in Darfur later this year.

[ST: German Defence Minister Peter Struck (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) indicated last September for the first time that Berlin might contribute soldiers to a UN mission in Sudan’s Darfur region, referring to the crisis there as “genocide” in an interview published Saturday, Sept 18, 2004.

He was the first German minister to use the word genocide in reference to Darfur.]