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EU to Send Force to Congo

Business Day (Johannesburg)
NEWS
June 4, 2003
Posted to the web June 4, 2003
Madrid
The European Union (EU) was poised to send a peacekeeping mission to strife-
torn northeastern Congo in a major test of the bloc's military ambitions,
officials said yesterday.
The 15 EU nations were set to approve the operation today and the French-led
force of 1400 could be on the ground in the city of Bunia within days, said
European officials on the sidelines of a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(Nato) foreign ministers' meeting. Such a mission would be the EU's second and
largest military mission, and the first outside Europe. In its first
deployment, the EU took over peacekeeping in Macedonia in March, with a force
of about 400 troops.
Unlike that operation, the mission to halt killings by tribal fighters in Congo
will be tackled without planning and logistics back up from Nato. EU officials
said Nato had no experience in Africa and the EU could rely on French military
planners who had often intervened in Africa.

   

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