Germany to participate with 50 military in the EU contingent to Sudan
LUXEMBOURG, Mar 19, 2005 (Sudan Tribune) — Germany wants to participate in the UN peacekeeping force in southern Sudan with 50 soldiers. Peter Eickenboom, undersecretary in the Federal Defence Ministry, announced this yesterday at a meeting of EU defence ministers in Luxembourg.
The 50 Bundeswehr soldiers are to be part of an EU contingent of about 250 military observers, the German newspaper Die Welt reported today.
The Blue Helmet force in southern Sudan consists of about 10,000 soldiers, including 750 military observers. With the offer, Germany wants to “give an impulse”, said Eickenboom, who had come to Luxembourg as the representative of Federal Defence Minister Peter Struck. The employment of the 50 German military advisers must still be approved by the Bundestag.
At their informal meeting, the ministers also agreed to coordinate future economic aid more closely with the military and security-policy efforts of the EU.
The proposal of Dutch Defence Minister Henk Kamp to develop “principles for an integrated crisis management” in the coming months met with general approval. Kamp said that “today it is simply outmoded to treat development aid, foreign policy and defence policy separately”. He named the EU commitments in Iraq and in Darfur in western Sudan as examples of such an integrated policy.
The ministers were able to show progress in their military planning. Thus, two of the 13 planned combat units that the EU agreed last year to establish are now more or less ready for operation. They are the British and French units. Germany is participating in six battle groups and commands three units.
The European battle groups that are each made up of 1,500 soldiers are supposed to be available within five days at the request of the United Nations, to be deployable within at most 10 days, and to be operational there for a maximum of 120 days. The goal of the EU is to have four battle groups available annually for crisis operations beginning in 2007.
Material provided by the BBC Monitoring Service.