SUVA, Sept 27 (AFP) - Fiji will start posting soldiers and bodyguards to Iraq next month to guard United Nations staff there, a military official told reporters Monday.
Fiji will provide 155 soldiers to protect UN buildings and 24 bodyguards for officials, Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) spokesman Captain Neumi Leweni said, adding that the advance party would leave for Baghdad next month.
RFMF had the arms and equipment and the UN would pay travel costs.
"This has been the UN terms since the East Timor mission where countries are supposed to provide their own equipment and the UN will reimburse them later," he said.
The UN closed their Baghdad headquarters after a car bomb in August last year killed 22 people, including mission head Sergio Vieira de Mello. Earlier this year a smaller UN team returned to Iraq.
Nearly 500 former Fiji soldiers are believed to be working in Iraq for private security organisations.
Fiji, between New Zealand and Hawaii, is an archipelago with a population of 845,000 people, 51 percent of them indigenous Melanesian or Polynesian, and 42 percent ethnic Indians. The 9,400-strong RFMF is almost entirely made up of indigenous Fijians.
Two years ago Fiji ended a 25-year long tour of duty with the UN in southern Lebanon, a mission that cost 32 soldiers' lives. They also served in the former Yugoslavia, Sinai and more recently East Timor and the Solomon Islands.