The German parliament on Friday approved plans to send up to 75 military observers and staff officers to the United Nations' peacekeeping force in southern Sudan. The lower house voted 552-3, with 10 abstentions, to commit German troops through Sept. 24 to the 10,000-strong peacekeeping mission, approved last month by the U.N. Security Council. The mission is to help enforce a Jan. 9 peace deal between the government and rebels in southern Sudan _ an agreement that ended Africa's longest-running conflict after 21 years. The U.N. resolution would only allow the peacekeepers to help African Union troops restore peace in a separate conflict in Sudan's western Darfur province if U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan approves.
