Tanzania is ready to send 200 soldiers to Syria for the United Nations peacekeeping mission 1807123

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Defense News - Tanzania
 
 
Wednesday, July 18, 2012, 05:14 PM
 
Tanzania is ready to send 200 soldiers to Syria for the United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Tanzania is planning to send a contingent of 200 soldiers to Syria for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, the country's defense minister has revealed, local media reported on Tuesday, July 17, 2012.
     
Tanzania is planning to send a contingent of 200 soldiers to Syria for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, the country's defense minister has revealed, local media reported on Tuesday, July 17, 2012.
Tanzanian army soldiers during training of Peace Keeping mission. (Archive image)
     

According to the Citizen daily on Tuesday, the minister for Defense and National Service, Shamsi Vuai Nahodha, revealed while presenting his ministry's 2012/2013 budget in the Parliament in Dodoma, the country's capital, one day earlier, that Tanzania is ready for the deployment under the request of UN.

He said that due to Tanzanian army's good record in various peacekeeping missions across the world, the UN Security Council has requested the east African country to send between 100 to 200 peacekeepers to Syria.

"We are ready to do that," said Nahodha, adding that the Tanzania People's Defense Forces (TPDF) was already doing preparations and the troops could leave for Syria the earliest.

Currently, a total of 1,081 Tanzanian 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 of Sudan.

"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," he said.