By Charles Mangwiro
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
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MAPUTO, Jan 16 (Reuters) - A Mozambican military contigent is training intensely in preparation for possible deployment as part of peacekeeping forces in Somalia and Sudan, a military spokesman said on Tuesday.
Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Joaquim Mataruca said the training began in December in response to U.N. and other requests for more peacekeepers.
"At the moment we are preparing a strong military contingent ... but we still do not know what type of missions or where the troops would be deployed," he told Reuters, declining to give any specific troop numbers.
Mataruca said Sudan and Somalia were likely candidates for troops from Mozambique, which in 2003 contributed its first troops for international peacekeeping operations as part of a contingent sent to Burundi.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki recently sent ministers to seven African countries seeking support for a continental force for Somalia to help prevent anarchy after Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian forces ousted Islamists in a two-week war in December.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday Africa's economic powerhouse would consider sending troops to Somalia but military operations elsewhere may limit its ability to deploy soldiers to the Horn of Africa nation.
Ethiopia has said it wants to withdraw its troops from Somalia within weeks, raising fears the Somali government could collapse given its lack of popular support.
The African Union and East African body IGAD say they are willing in principle to send more than 8,000 peacekeepers into Somalia, provided funding is made available and member nations supply soldiers and equipment.
In Sudan's Darfur conflict, the United Nations this week said it would reassess whether to send peacekeepers to Chad and the Central African Republic after Darfur violence began spilling across their borders.
Sudan has more or less agreed to a "hybrid" African Union-U.N. force in Darfur but has rejected the 20,000 peacekeepers and police the U.N. Security Council wanted to send to support some 7,000 AU troops already in the region.
Source: Reuters, Jan 16, 2007