'Thousands' of troops for Sudan
2004-09-29 21:19
Nairobi - The African Union (AU) is planning to send "several thousand" more troops to Sudan's troubled Darfur region, where it has already deployed military observers and a modest protection force, an AU source told AFP on Wednesday.
"We are going to send several thousand soldiers," the AU official said, adding that the deployment would be conducted with the agreement of all parties concerned, notably the government in Khartoum.
The AU already has 156 military observers monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur, where an armed rebellion and a brutal response by government-backed militias has spawned what the UN describes as the world's worst current humanitarian crisis.
Also, 310 AU troops, from Rwanda and Nigeria, have been deployed as a "protection force" in Darfur.
Speaking to AFP in Nairobi from the AU's headquarters in Addis Ababa, the official explained that the mandate of the planned "substantially reinforced" mission would be determined at a meeting of the AU's peace and security council in the coming weeks.
"The AU is going to move forward very quickly," he said, without specifying a date for the troops' deployment.
Earlier on Wednesday, UN special envoy for Sudan Jan Pronk said the enlarged AU force should deploy "possibly starting in October".
"That's not possible," said the AU source. "We have to be realistic."