Stephen Phillips – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Phillips on 2014-04-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to encourage his counterparts in other EU member states to support and commit resources to the EUFOR RCA mission in the Central African Republic.

Mark Simmonds

I welcome the launch of the EU Force (EUFOR) military operation in the Central African Republic (CAR) on 2 April. EUFOR will help the African-led International Support Mission to CAR (MISCA) and French (Sangaris) forces to provide security in Bangui until a hand-over to MISCA or a possible UN Peacekeeping Operation can take place. I discussed the importance of the mission with Ministerial colleagues in the margins of the EU-Africa Summit in Brussels on 1-2 April. The UK has played a strong role in the planning for EUFOR, and is discussing the possibility of providing airlifts to help EUFOR’s deployment. Ongoing reports of violence in CAR demonstrate the importance of this mission.