The Netherlands will begin to fly 154 Rwandan troops to Sudan's Darfur region on Saturday, the first deployment of foreign troops to the site of what the U.N. calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Dutch ambassador to Ethiopia Rob Bermaas said on Tuesday the troops will serve as a protection force for African Union (AU) ceasefire monitors. "The Rwandan troops will be airlifted to Darfur beginning Saturday. We consider getting the Rwandan troops on the ground to be very urgent," he said, adding the contingent would be flown to El Fasher, the capital of Northern Darfur state. The Netherlands announced last week it would fund a mission to fly 360 Rwandan and Nigerian AU troops to Darfur to monitor a shaky truce between rebels and the Khartoum government. "They have tentatively given us the 15th August for the first group of around 150 Rwandan soldiers," Rwandan army spokesman Patrick Karegeya said in Kigali. It has not yet been decided when the Nigerian forces would be sent to Darfur, an area the size of France. "There is an indication that we may send a battalion but this has not been confirmed yet," a Nigerian army spokesman said.
