Rwandan troops arrive in Sudan
2004-08-16 11:28
El Fasher - About 140 Rwandan soldiers arrived in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, becoming the first foreign armed force deployed in the Iraq-sized region since Arab militiamen began attacking black African farmers.
The Rwandan contingent was airlifted to Darfur to protect unarmed military observers monitoring a four-month ceasefire between Sudanese government forces and rebels.
The 140 or so Rwandan troops, clad in desert combat camouflage, arrived on Sunday in Darfur following an advance party of a dozen soldiers who flew out the previous day.
They are part of a 300-member African Union protection force Sudan was pressed to allow into Darfur, where thousands of civilians have been killed, more than a million forced from their homes and about 2,2 million left in urgent need of aid in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"Unfavourable climate"
While Rwanda President Paul Kagame has said his country's troops would use force if necessary to protect civilians in danger, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail made it clear that this would not be acceptable.
Speaking in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, Ismail said his government would object to African Union troops if they engaged in fighting with the Arab militiamen, called Janjaweed.
"If those forces were to enter into clashes with the Janjaweed and armed militia, this would create an unfavourable climate," Ismail was quoted as saying by the state-run Sudan Media Centre on Sunday.
The foreign minister said his government had no objection to African Union troops in their role as protectors of the cease-fire monitors.
The Rwandan troops were trucked to a camp immediately after landing Sunday in El Fasher, capital of the Northern Darfur state.
They will be deployed to five other areas, including a region in neighbouring Chad where thousands have sought refuge from the violence in Darfur, the African Union said in a statement.
Nigerian troops are expected to go to Darfur on August 25, the statement said.
Rwanda has been pushing African leaders to give the troops a formal mandate to use force to stop attacks on civilians, Rwandan officials have said.
"Our forces will not stand by and watch innocent civilians being hacked to death like the case was here in 1994," Kagame said on Saturday, referring to United Nations troops who did not intervene as a genocide unfolded in Rwanda because they did not have a mandate to stop the slaughter of at least 500 000 minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority.
Meanwhile, UN officials said Sudanese soldiers were preventing aid from reaching about 90 000 displaced people in a camp. But Sudan's Deputy Information Minister Abdel Dafe Khattib said aid was reaching Kalma, a camp east of the South Darfur capital of Nyala.
- AP