Irish troops could shortly be on their way to join a United Nations force keeping the peace in southern Sudan, writes Paul Cullen.
The UN has asked Ireland to deploy troops as part of a multi-national peacekeeping force set up to police last January's peace accord, which brought to an end 21 years of civil war in the African nation.
Minister of State for Overseas Co-operation Conor Lenihan said UN representatives made the request during his visit to Sudan last week.
He said he would be contacting Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea shortly about the request.
"I'm very anxious that we should help, if possible, by making available a good number of Army personnel for the peace effort in south Sudan."
Mr Lenihan is currently in Oslo attending an international donors' conference on Sudan, at which Ireland is expected to make a substantial pledge to support the rebuilding of Sudan.
Last year it gave €10 million in aid for the area.
Up to 10,000 UN troops and 700 police officers are to be deployed in the region as part of the peace agreement between the Islamist government based in Khartoum and Christian rebels in the south.
The request for Irish involvement came from Jan Pronk, the special representative in Sudan of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, in a meeting with Mr Lenihan last week. A formal request is expected to follow shortly from the UN's department of peacekeeping operations in New York.
Mr Lenihan said Mr Pronk asked that Ireland take part in an initial deployment of 750 military observers, of which 250 would come from EU states.
During his visit, Mr Lenihan also visited the western region of Darfur, the scene of a separate conflict involving the Sudanese government and militias allegedly allied to it, and rebels who say the region's inhabitants are discriminated against by Khartoum.
Officials of the African Union (AU) briefed him about their peacekeeping operation, which involves 2,600 soldiers policing an area the size of France. Although the AU operation has been the subject of criticism, Mr Lenihan said it had achieved "a significant amount of credibility on a small budget". He supported plans to increase the size of the force to 6,000 but this would require additional assistance.
Asked about calls for Western countries to send in troops to Darfur, Mr Lenihan said it would be "totally impractical" for the EU to do this.
More international pressure was needed to ensure that further progress was made in stabilising the situation, he said. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the Darfur fighting, which has affected over 2.4 million people.
Some 1.85 million of these have been internally displaced or forced to flee into neighbouring Chad.
The crisis was triggered in February 2003 when pastoral rebel groups took up arms against the government in a struggle over power and scarce resources. Khartoum retaliated by arming a nomadic Arab militia known as the Janjaweed.