Canada will not be sending hundreds of peacekeepers to support a United Nations mission in Mali in the near future, officials said on Wednesday.
The move is likely to disappoint allies who want Canadians to play a role in the West African country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year promised to contribute up to 600 troops to peacekeeping operations and Canadian defense experts made three trips to Mali, where soldiers under the U.N. are fighting Islamist militants, Reuters reports.
Canada said it would split its soldiers among various missions instead, with no more than 200 going to any one spot, and will offer transport aircraft and helicopters in a series of “smart pledge” initiatives. It will also help train peacekeepers.
U.N. officials downplayed concerns, saying that if Canada had pledged its troops and equipment to a single mission, like Mali, then those assets could not be deployed to support other missions in the region.
“This is exactly what we need, we need flexibility… we need to be able to allocate these resources where we need them the most,” Jean-Pierre Lacroix, a U.N. under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations said.
Lacroix said talks continue on how Canadian assets will be deployed, but stated that he was sure there is a strong determination to turn this commitment into a concrete action on the ground.
A Canadian official had earlier said that the option of sending forces to Mali one day is still alive. The official added that the planning process took at least six months, hence no rapid deployment to any mission would be seen.
Unhappy allies this year said Canada’s bid for a U.N. Security Council seat could suffer unless Trudeau lived up to his promises.
“This approach will be a disappointment to some, and the Canadian government will have to work hard to overcome the credibility it has lost in not following through on its initial pledge,” a security studies expert at Queen’s University in Kingston, Jane Boulden said.
In the past four years, 118 peacekeepers have been killed — making the U.N. mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, the world body’s deadliest ongoing peace operation.
