Sudan's foreign minister told reporters on Wednesday that his government supported the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force for Darfur, as authorized by the UN Security Council, while a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Europe volunteered to send troops to join it.
Nigeria, which already makes up the bulk of the 7,000-member African Union force in Darfur, pledged a fourth battalion of troops, and Senegal also said it would consider sending more troops if the soldiers had adequate means to protect themselves. Senegal had threatened to withdraw from the African Union peacekeeping force after five Senegalese soldiers were killed in an ambush earlier this year.
France, Indonesia, Denmark, Sweden and Norway also indicated that they were considering sending troops to bolster the force, which is expected to begin deploying late this year.
At full strength, with about 20,000 soldiers and 6,000 civilian police officers, it will be the world's largest peacekeeping operation, costing US$2 billion in the first year.
The 7,000 troops in place will be absorbed into the new force, which will be a joint operation between the African Union and the UN, led by an African general but largely run by the UN.
Aid groups and human rights activists praised the Security Council resolution approved on Tuesday that authorized the force, but cautioned that it must be put into effect swiftly.
"Given the Sudanese government's past record of obstructing such deployments, we urge the government to facilitate the rapid deployment of the new force," Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan said in a statement.
"The people of Darfur have been offered too many words and too many resolutions. Now is the time for effective action."
With an agreement on a peacekeeping force, diplomats turned their attention to talks that are scheduled to begin today in Arusha, Tanzania, aimed at persuading the various rebel groups fighting in Darfur to unite and move toward a peace deal with the Sudanese government.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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