By Irwin Arieff
November 21, 2006
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UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 (Reuters) - A Security Council committee decided on Tuesday to give governments accused of illegally funneling weapons to Somalia the chance to question the four U.N. experts who uncovered the alleged deals.
The U.N. experts and accused governments would be invited to confront one another at a meeting next week, council diplomats said.
The council committee also decided to formally submit the experts' detailed findings to the full 15-nation Security Council without editing, the diplomats said after a closed-door meeting.
An advance copy of the report, obtained by Reuters earlier this month, laid out a complex web of disparate foreign interests pouring arms, ammunition, money, supplies and other help to Somalia's shaky interim government or its powerful Islamist rivals, despite a U.N. arms embargo.
Both groups have been vying for control of the fragile Horn of Africa nation since the Islamists took the capital Mogadishu from U.S.-backed warlords in June.
The experts are chairman Bruno Schiemsky of Belgium, Melvin Holt of the United States, Harjit Kelley of Kenya and Joel Salek from Colombia.
According to the experts' report, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria provided illicit support to the Islamists while Ethiopia, Uganda and Yemen illegally helped supply the interim government.
The report also charged that Iran may have sought to trade arms for uranium from Somalia or elsewhere in Africa to fuel its nuclear ambitions.
And it said about 720 Somali Islamist fighters had gone to Lebanon to fight Israel alongside Hezbollah guerrillas in mid-July.
A number of governments named in the report have complained to either the Security Council or U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that its allegations were false or unfounded.
Some committee members last week had asked whether certain of the findings could be further verified or edited before the report was sent to the full Security Council, but in the end, the committee rejected those ideas, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the committee sessions are meant to be confidential.
Committee members put off indefinitely a discussion of possible council actions to strengthen the U.N. arms embargo and shore up the interim government, the diplomats added.
Source: Reuters, Nov 21, 2006