Ethiopia on Thursday pledged 5,000 troops to a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region.
The 26,000-strong joint mission is to replace a hard-pressed AU force that lacks experience, equipment and cash and has been unable to stop the conflict. Some 200,000 people are estimated to have died in the fighting and an ensuing humanitarian crisis.
"Ethiopia is ready, the troops are equipped, and we are waiting for a request from the AU and the United Nations to disperse the troops to Darfur," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
While African nations have pledged more than enough infantry for the joint force, its future leader, new AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai, said this week few African armies had enough troops that met U.N. standards.
Agwai, a Nigerian, said: "The reality is not many African countries can provide troops that can self-sustain themselves for six months," he said.
"There's no African country that can have the equipment we need, for example in air assets," he said, adding Nigeria, one of the best armies in Africa, could not do it.
A Nigerian army team meanwhile arrived in Darfur to repatriate the bodies of seven Nigerian soldiers who were killed in the worst attack on African Union peacekeepers last Saturday.
The attack, in which three other soldiers also died and seven were seriously wounded, prompted a new call by Agwai for non-African and Western nations to pledge troops and equipment quickly to the joint U.N.-AU mission due to take over on Jan. 1.
He has said the 7,000-strong AU force was "outgunned and outnumbered" by many of the parties in the Darfur conflict.
International elder statesmen including two Nobel Peace Prize winners said on Thursday Darfur was rife with violence and deeply divided, after returning from the Sudanese region.
The group, including Nobel laureates former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said rape was widespread and ignored by the Sudanese authorities.
