Kosovo mission winds down

FIJI TIMES, Wednesday, July 27, 2005

POLICE officers have been sent to Sudan because peacekeeping missions in Kosovo are downsizing, Police Commissioner Andrew Hughes says.

"The peacekeeping mission to Kosovo has been downsized and plans for these missions are in fact made by government," Mr Hughes said.

Two police officers on attachment in Sudan left last month, with eight more leaving soon.

Foreign Affairs minister Kaliopate Tavola said his ministry received the requests and then passed it on to the Home Affairs minister.

Last year, it was reported Fiji stood to earn $6-million a year if police peacekeeping missions were set up this year.

Mr Hughes had said last year the United Nations Security Council was looking at sending troops to the Ivory Coast last year.

A report from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was sent to Mr Hughes last year stating that conditions were right to establish a peacekeeping mission in strife-ridden Ivory Coast.

Sonce then, Mr Hughes said nothing had been finalised yet because it was still a proposal.

He said six UN police officers were to carry out an assessment of future peacekeeping operations.

He said last year that prospects for peacekeeping operations by Fiji police abroad looked bright with the deployment of officers to Kosovo reducing gradually from 31 to 19 and additional deployments filling the vacuum.

Officers serving peacekeeping missions in Liberia will be earning $312 in daily allowance while those deployed to Kosovo earned $128 a day and those serving in the Solomon Islands earned $64 a day.

The first police peacekeeping mission abroad was in 1989 to Namibia, in southwest Africa.