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| Down Under |
| Australian troops sent to Sudan |
| 2005-04-20 |
| THE first Australian troops heading for Sudan to aid a UN mission will depart soon and numbers could eventually increase, Defence Minister Robert Hill said today. Senator Hill said the Australian contribution to the 10,000-member United Nations Mission in Sudan would include logistics and air movement specialists and military observers. "I am actually expecting the first of them to go within a matter of days rather than weeks," he said. "I suspect the UN will be in Sudan for a long time. It's been a civil that has gone for decades. It is an historical opportunity. The fact that the international community is responding to support the peace agreement is very important. "It is likely that we will be requested to stay longer. We may well be requested to provide different specialised elements during the course of the UN program. "We could end up with some more but we have always said it would be a small deployment and it would be people with specialised skills." Senator Hill said the UN appeared to have no difficulty getting large numbers of infantry for UN missions. But it did have problems finding skilled personnel to perform such tasks as managing undeveloped airports in a safe manner and turned to nations such as Australia, he said. Senator Hill said the Government indicated last year Australia would be willing to make a modest contribution to the UN force in Sudan. However, the UN only gave the official go-ahead last month. Sudan has been the scene of the world's longest-running civil war, which has pitted the predominantly Muslim north against the Christian and animist south. In early 2003, the conflict spread to the Darfur region of Sudan's west where pro-government militias called Janjaweed have killed up to 30,000 people, most of them black Africans, and driven more than a million from their homes. Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian crisis to rival Somalia or Ethiopia of a decade ago. The UN Security Council authorised the establishment of UNMIS on March 24 under Resolution 1590 after the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end the 20 year war. The Australian contribution is intended to assist in the UN mission to facilitate peace moves to settle the north-south conflict. However, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said UNMIS would also play a major role in supporting the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Darfur. |
| Posted by:God Save The World |