Army Spokesman, Maj. Jill Rutaremara, has said that the army welcomes the UN’s intentions to strengthen strategic partnership of the UN and the African Union in peacekeeping missions in Africa.

"It is a move aimed at ensuring peace on the continent, we welcome it,” said Rutaremara.

He added that issues of international peace and security cannot be confined to a single region.

"International and regional partnership is important in building the capacity to deal with conflicts in Africa and beyond,” he said.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, recently released a report in which he outlined steps to boost the capacity of the African Union to successfully carry out UN-authorised peacekeeping operations.

Ki-moon’s commitment outlines steps to boost the continental body in the areas of finance, logistics and human resources.

"I am fully committed to supporting the African Union as it fulfils its potential as a partner of the United Nations in pursuit of peace in Africa,” he wrote in a new report to the Security Council.

Currently, Rwanda is among the top African countries that are contributing highly to the peacekeeping missions with close to 4000 troops in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, serving in the AU-UN hybrid peacekeeping force.

In his report, the Secretary General wrote that that he has made a number of proposals that he believed would strengthen the strategic partnership between the UN and the AU.

"I have provided an assessment of various mechanisms that may assist the Security Council and the General Assembly in exploring means to assist the African Union in supporting peacekeeping operations authorized by the Security Council,” the report quotes Ki-moon.

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