Wednesday, June 28, 2006
By Alistair Thomson
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said the AU’s Peace and Security Council, which she chairs, had decided to send a “strong message” to the United Nations asking for the ban to be relaxed.
The UN arms embargo on Somalia dates from 1992, the year after fierce fighting broke out between rival clans following the overthrow of President Mohammed Siad Barre.
Clan fighting has since raged on and off in the capital Mogadishu and the city remained in the hands of the rival clan warlords until an Islamic Courts movement won control in early June after a bloody three-month battle against the warlords.
“We also agreed that we are going to send a strong message to the United Nations in connection with the arms embargo,” Dlamini Zuma told a news conference after chairing a Peace and Security Council meeting in Gambia’s capital Banjul.
“Whilst we support the arms embargo, the peace support mission should not be affected by this embargo, and also the transitional government must be able to build its institutions like the police and so on,” she said.
A regional peace support mission has been proposed for Somalia, but the UN embargo on arms has been cited as an obstacle.
Abdikarin Farah, Somalia’s ambassador to the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, said the Somali government had asked the AU to broaden the regional peacekeeping mission to include countries outside Somalia’s immediate vicinity.
“The problem of Somalia is no longer the problem of Somalia alone. It is going to be a regional problem now – insecurity, extremism,” Farah told reporters after briefing the AU’s Peace and Security Council meeting on Tuesday.
The Somali government was initially formed in exile in Kenya in 2004 and is now based in the Somali town of Baidoa as it is still too weak to take power in Mogadishu.
It has recognised the Islamic Courts movement at high-level talks in Sudan and has agreed to further talks in Khartoum on July 25.
But Farah welcomed the hardening of resistance to the Islamic Courts movement from Washington, which had supported clan warlords as a way to reduce the influence of Islamic leaders.
US resistance to the Islamic Courts movement has increased since the naming of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys – who appears on a UN list of al Qaeda associates – to a top post over the weekend.
African Union heads of state are due in Banjul at the weekend for one of the African Union’s twice yearly summits at which Somalia is expected to be a hot topic.
Source: Reuters, June 28, 2006
