TOKYO - Japan has decided Sudan is too risky to contribute UN peacekeeping troops, ruling against a mission that would have marked a new breakthrough for the officially pacifist country, reports said on Wednesday. Japan, which sent a team to Sudan last month to study a possible deployment, decided that security in the vast African country was uncertain and that Japan would be stretched thin in light of its mission in Iraq, Kyodo News said.The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said on its website that Japan would instead send civilians such as diplomats to help the 10,000-strong Sudan peacekeeping force, which was approved by the UN Security Council on March 24. The reports quoted unspecified government sources. There was no immediate official comment.
Japan had studied whether to send troops who would disarm combatants as part of the ceasefire ending Sudan's bloody 21-year north-south civil war, in a much riskier operation than Tokyo's previous peacekeeping missions.
UN Undersecretary General Jean-Marie Guehenno, who is in charge of peacekeeping, on a visit here in early March encouraged Japan to be part of the Sudan mission, making clear Tokyo could participate by sending civilians.