From Reuters via the New York Times:
China plans to send a contingent of peacekeeping troops to Lebanon and is consulting the United Nations on the details, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday.
The spokesman gave no details but French President Jacques Chirac, whose country is a key player in the U.N. deployment, suggested that China’s contribution may number around 1,000.
China, growing in confidence on the global stage, has become increasingly involved in U.N. peacekeeping operations since 2000. At the end of 2005 it had been involved in over 20 U.N. missions including in Afghanistan, East Timor and Haiti. [Full Text]
See also People Daily Online’s China sends police officer on UN peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan (2005), and Xinhua’s FM spokesman: Chinese engineering troops to stay in Lebanon
But China Daily only re-ran Reuters’ dispatch here. It seems Xinhua and other Chinese news agencies, including Sina.com, haven’t picked up the news yet. Or they don’t want to for some reason.
