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 UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Dutch ambassador to Ethiopia Mr Rob Bermaas said 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 Rwandan and Nigerian AU troops to Darfur to monitor a shaky truce between rebels and the Khartoum government.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry in The Hague confirmed the airlift of Rwandan troops would proceed on Saturday and there were plans to fly 154 Nigerian troops to Darfur on Aug. 25.
However, a Nigerian army spokesman said it was unclear when Nigerian troops would be dispatched 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," he said.
The AU troops would be the first foreign military deployment in western Sudan where armed militias have clashed with rebels and attacked villagers in a scorched-earth campaign the US Congress calls genocide.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mr Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Khartoum that Egypt, Libya and Algeria had agreed to send monitors to observe the ceasefire, which was signed on April 8th.
The 53-member AU has said it wants to boost the number of troops to Darfur to 2,000 and broaden the original mandate to include a peacekeeping role as well as protect the ceasefire observers.