Agence France-Presse, On Friday, Australia ruled out contributing troops to a U.N. force in Sudan’s Darfur region, saying its army was already overstretched by deployments in trouble spots, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We are very heavily committed at the present time and in order to meet a commitment, a sizable commitment in Darfur, we would have to pull forces out of other parts of the world to send them there,” said Prime Minister John Howard.
Sudan this week for the first time accepted plans for the deployment of a hybrid African Union-United Nations force to the war-ravaged western Sudanese region in a move to end the violence and provide humanitarian aid.
Khartoum had previously rejected attempts to send UN peacekeepers to Darfur, where a four-year conflict has killed at least 200,000 people and forced more than two million from their homes, according to UN figures.
There are already around 7,000 African Union (AU) peacekeepers in Darfur but they have been unable to stem the clashes in a region the size of France owing to a severe shortage of funding and equipment.
The UN has indicated that the so-called “hybrid” AU-UN force would comprise between 17,500 and 19,600 troops in addition to more than 6,000 police.
Howard, a close ally of US President George W. Bush, has contributed some 1,400 troops to the US-led coalition in Iraq and recently announced Australia would nearly double its military force in Afghanistan to 1,000 troops.
Canberra has also deployed peacekeeping troops closer to home, in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.
