Developed countries should contribute more soldiers and police officers to the UN peacekeeping operations to help the world body better fulfill its mission, the United Nations' peacekeeping chief said Monday, Nov 1.

In an interview with Xinhua, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said developed countries can do more to support UN peacekeeping by not only restoring order to the strife-torn countries but also helping rebuild their homelands.

There is a surging demand for UN peacekeeping in Africa and other parts of the world in recent years, posing a big challenge to the UN peacekeeping capacity, said Guehenno, who has been in charge of the UN peacekeeping department since 2000.

In the past year, the number of UN soldiers, military observers and civilian police officers wearing blue helmets has nearly doubled from 32,000 to 60,000 with the UN operations expanded to Liberia, Haiti, Cote d'Ivoire and Burundi. Peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have also been significantly boosted.

The United Nations, currently running 17 peacekeeping operations worldwide, plans to establish new missions in Sudan and other countries plagued by internal conflicts and this would require at least 10,000 more peacekeepers next year, Guehenno said.

In an earlier report to the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan predicted that the number of UN peacekeepers would reach an unprecedented 80,000 in the next couple of years.

At present, the top 10 troop contributors to UN peacekeeping missions are all developing countries, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana, Guehenno said, adding that developed countries should take their share of burden in supporting UN peacekeeping, not only financially but also militarily.

He called China a role model for other key members of the UN Security Council in contributing specialized units to UN peacekeeping missions.

"We're very pleased that China took its share of burden with a significant participation in peacekeeping of more than 1,000 uniformed personnel," he said. "I think all the five permanent Security Council members should have the same approach."

The four other permanent council members -- France, the United States, Britain and Russia -- together are contributing no more than 1,500 peacekeepers.

Developed countries are in a position to provide specialized military capacities which UN missions need urgently, including engineering units, field medical facilities, transport units, francophone policemen and attack helicopters, said Guehenno.

As the UN peacekeeping mandate sometimes takes other dimensions, developed countries can also do more in helping post-conflict regions recover from their war-torn past, he said.

Today's peacekeeping operations are more challenging than in the 1990s as many of them are established to monitor implementation of fragile agreements to end civil wars, Guehenno noted.

"We're deploying peacekeepers to end a civil war on the basis of a political agreement that has been negotiated between various parties concerned," he said, adding that such agreements are usually fragile and the UN peacekeeping forces have to be robust.

Peacekeeping in these post-conflict situations has to be complemented by peacebuilding and the mandate of peacekeeping missions should therefore be "multi-dimensional," Guehenno said.

"As peacekeepers provide security measures, you have to help build the capacities of the state so that it can meet the expectations of its people," he explained, adding that developed countries need to do more in this aspect.

Developed countries pay most of the UN peacekeeping bills, with the United States paying some 25 percent of the UN peacekeeping budget of 2.96 billion US dollars in the current fiscal year. Afraid of paying more, some developed countries, particularly the United States, have been weary of creating new peacekeeping operations.

Mainly due to US opposition, the Security Council last month failed to agree on an expansion of the peacekeeping force there by 13,100 members in the DRC as recommended by UN Secretary-General Annan. Instead, it agreed to send in an extra 5,900 troops and police officers.

Guehenno called on all UN member states, developed and developing alike, to reaffirm their commitments to the UN peacekeeping cause.

"The United Nations is as strong as its member states want," he said. "If commitments are not there, we're in a weak position."

Source: Xinhua