The rapid response force would be made up of some 210 troops, with the corresponding equipment, and its performance is scheduled for 2024, announced the Minister of National Defense, Javier García, in the act of recognition of José Eladio Alcaín, who was in charge of the United Nations military observer group in India-Pakistan for nearly five years.
The act was held this Thursday 6 at the Ramón Trabal amphitheater of the Ministry of Defense. The Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Gerardo Fregossi, and the representative of the United Nations Organization (UN) in Uruguay, Pablo Ruiz Hiebra, among other military and civil authorities, also attended.
At the Ministerial Conference on Peacekeeping, organized by South Korea, at the end of 2021, Uruguay presented to the UN its intention to participate in new missions with different capacities, after evaluating each one, explained García. For this reason, the Ministry of Defense seeks the creation of a rapid response force (QRF, for its acronym in English), made up of some 210 troops, with their corresponding equipment. The hierarch estimated that the group would be ready to act in 2024.
The objective is, after an assessment by the Executive Power and the Parliament, to intervene in new peace missions that the international organization requires. “A leading country in peacekeeping missions, such as Uruguay, must be prepared for the new capabilities and deployments requested by the United Nations,” he considered, adding that it is working with some countries in the region to improve and increase equipment.
Regarding the recognition to Alcaín, he pointed out that it went to the person, because he was the Uruguayan officer who spent the longest time in an international mission, but also to the Armed Forces, for efficiently carrying out this task, one of the fundamental tasks of the ministry. “The Uruguayan Armed Forces are the ones with the greatest peacemaking power in the world,” he concluded.
