South Africa and Rwanda will be sending troops to Sudan as part of a United Nations initiative to bring peace to the region, South African defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota said in Kigali on Monday.
He said that South African representatives would be meeting with Rwanda’s government, ”possibly as soon as Tuesday,” to discuss ways of streamlining their deployment plan of troops to Darfur in Sudan.
South Africa is expected to contribute 10 high-ranking soldiers to the peace effort to act as platoon leaders. Rwanda is expected to provide 100 soldiers.
Lekota was speaking at the signing of a joint military agreement between him and his counterpart, General Marcel Gatsinzi.
The bilateral agreement makes provision for the training of the Rwandan military, peace keeping operations, and the provision of military equipment.
”This memorandum of understanding further provides for the establishment of the South Africa-Rwanda Joint Defence Committee to promote the implementation of this cooperation,” he said.
Gatsinzi said that with South Africa’s visible support, Rwanda would be able to move forward and help build peace in the region.
But the military agreements which South Africa signed with Rwanda and a similar one it signed with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) two weeks ago have raised the eyebrows of Amnesty International (AI), which believes they are not in the interests of regional peace.
According to the Rapport newspaper, AI’s South African spokesperson, Samkelo Mokhine, said his organisation was against the deal.
”We are against the supply of weapons or training in any area with active conflict, and the DRC is such a place,” he was quoted as saying. Mokhine also said AI was against the Rwandan agreement because many of the weapons used in the DRC were smuggled through Rwanda.
But Lekota and Gatsinzi defended their agreements by saying that each country had the right to defend itself from a possible invasion.
Lekota added that South Africa’s defence position was not offensive but defensive and that the equipment it manufactured and sold fell into that ambit.
He challenged any organisation to report South Africa, the DRC or Rwanda to the African Union (AU) or the UN if they felt that they were doing something wrong.
”But the allegations must be backed up with irrefutable evidence,” he said.
He said that stability in the region was critical and that peace was the only way to achieve this.
Colonel Patrick Karegyeya of the Rwandan Defence Force headquarters said that the agreement with South Africa meant a lot to the country.
”It’s a professional agreement,” he said.
Responding to allegations that the fragile peace between them and their neighbours, the DRC, had almost erupted into armed conflict again last week, Karegyeya said it had been so, but had been more a ”battle of words” than the use of military hardware.
”Its often difficult to find logic in the DRC but in last week’s episode it proved impossible,” he said, referring to allegations that a group of men whom the DRC classified as ”Rwandan” had moved close to their mutual border causing jitters on both sides. – Sapa