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The government has announced plans to send a contingent of 200 soldiers
to Syria for the purpose of beefing up the United Nations peacekeeping mission.
This was revealed yesterday by the minister for Defence and National
Service, Mr Shamsi Vuai Nahodha, when tabling his ministry’s 2012/13 budget
amounting to Sh1.086 trillion.
“Because of the our troops’ good record in various peacekeeping
missions across the world, the UN Security Council has requested Tanzania to
send between 100 to 200 peacekeepers to Syria... and we are ready to do that,”
said Mr Nahodha before attentive MPs.
The decision by the government comes at a time when global leaders and
the international community have been grappling with how to cajole Syria
leader, Mr Bashar al Assad, to agree to peace deal.
UN secretary general, Mr Ban Ki-moon, has appointed former UN secretary
general, Mr Kofi Annan, as special envoy to Syria, but his efforts so far have
failed to bear fruit.
On Sunday the Syrian army continued with its attacks on rebel strongholds
in Damascus, pounding their bases with mortars, sparking the most intense
fighting in the capital since the revolt erupted 16 months ago, a monitoring
group said.
The government troops’ offensive, aimed at driving rebels of the Free
Syrian Army (FSA) out of Damascus, was launched soon after the foreign ministry
held a press conference to deny its forces was responsible for the onslaught on
Treimsa Village where at least 150 were killed.
“The regular army fired mortar rounds into several suburbs where FSA
rebels are entrenched,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights.
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The fighting was heaviest in the Tadamon, Kfar Sousa, Nahr Aisha and
Sidi Qadad neighbourhoods, he said. The Local Coordination Committees, which
organise anti-regime protests in Syria, said plumes of black smoke were
billowing out of Tadamon on Sunday night and that loud explosions had been
heard in Nahr Aisha.
Mr Nahodha told the august House yesterday that the Tanzania People’s
Defence Forces (TPDF) was already doing preparations and the troops could leave
for Syria the earliest.
If the government will leave up to the UN expectation par excellence
and release 200 fighters, the number of Tanzanian peacekeepers in various
United Nations mission across the world will add up to 1,281.
Mr Nahodha said currently, a total of 1,081 Tanzanians army men and women are serving in UN peacekeeping operations in four
countries, namely the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cote d’Ivoire,
Lebanon and Darfur.
“We deployed these peacekeepers because we are aware of our
responsibility as a country, which entails cooperating with others in making
sure peace is maintained everywhere in the world,” said Mr Nahodha.
Source: The Citizen, http://www.thecitizen.co.tz, reported by Frank Kimboy
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