About 140 Rwandan soldiers arrived in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, becoming the first foreign armed force deployed in the 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 cease-fire between Sudanese government forces and rebels.
PHOTO: EPA
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 which Sudan was pressed to allow into Darfur, where thousands of civilians have been killed, more than 1 million forced from their homes and some 2.2 million left in urgent need of aid in what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
While Rwandan 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 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 Janjaweed, or Arab militiamen.
"If those forces were to enter into clashes with the Janjaweed and armed militia, this would create an unfavorable climate," Ismail was quoted as saying by the state-run Sudan Media Center on Sunday.
Ismail said his government had no objection to African Union troops in their role as protectors of the cease-fire monitors.
"The government reservations are not against the African Union troops, but on their being trans-formed into fully fledged forces, carrying weapons to confront the rebel elements. This will complicate things further," Ismail said.
The Rwandan troops were trucked to a camp immediately after landing on Sunday in El Fasher, capital of the Northern Darfur state.
They will be deployed to five other areas, including a region in neighboring 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 Aug. 25, the statement said.
"All my troops are on board, we hope our mission in Darfur will be of great benefit to our African brothers there," Major Emmanuel Rugazora, commander of the Rwandan army contingent to Darfur, said.
The advance team was airlifted on Saturday to Darfur aboard a cargo aircraft carrying armored personnel carriers, arms, ammunition and other military supplies for the troops.
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.
He was referring to UN 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.
"If it was established that the civilians are in danger, then our forces would certainly intervene and use force to protect civilians," Kagame said. "It does not make sense to give security to peace observers while the local population is left to die."
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.
Jennifer Abrahamson, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said government troops blockaded the gates to Kalma on Friday after its inhabitants killed an alleged member of the Janjaweed.
The UN's special representative to Sudan, Jan Pronk, said in a statement on Sunday that he was "very concerned that since three days the UN and humanitarian workers have been denied access to Kalma camp, which will have serious consequences on the ... needs for relief and assistance."
Pronk had asked his deputy and other official to visit the camp yesterday.
On Sunday, Ismail presented Pronk with a list of extra actions being carried out by the Sudanese government to secure areas in Darfur.
Pronk welcomed the steps, but said in the statement that the "crucial phase will be the one when it could be demonstrated that these actions have borne fruit on the ground."
Pronk expressed concern about the lack of progress registered so far on the ground and at the fact that Janjaweed were still active around the camps and continued to be a threat.
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