UN to extend African peace force in Somalia

Monday, August 20, 2007

 

NEW YORK (AFP) - The Security Council Monday approved renewal of the mandate of African Union forces struggling to keep the peace in war-torn Somalia, pushing back the prospect of relief from a  United Nations deployment.

 

The 15 members of the council unanimously backed the resolution tabled by Britain to extend by six months the mandate of the weak, under-funded force of some 1,700 Ugandan soldiers, known as AMISOM.

 

The extension was approved by the African Union (AU) in July but needed the authority of the world body's Security Council to go ahead. The UN itself has shrunk from committing its own troops to the volatile country.

 

Hundreds have died since the beginning of the year as the Somali capital Mogadishu saw an upsurge in clashes between government-backed Ethiopian forces and Islamist insurgents and clan fighters opposed to their presence.

 

The country has been carved apart by civil war ever since the ouster of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Bombings and shootings flared this year, with attacks almost daily since the government drove the Islamists from Mogadishu with Ethiopia's help.

 

The Ugandans are due soon to be bolstered by 1,500 AU troops from Burundi, but the African bloc really wants the UN to take over when its mandate expires at the end of this year.

 

UN countries at a Security Council meeting on August 13 voiced unwillingness to commit to such a move, however. The last UN operation in Somalia in the late 1990s ended in disaster with the death of 151 blue helmeted peacekeepers.

 

In Monday's resolution the council called on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon "to continue to develop the existing contingency planning for the possible deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping operation replacing AMISOM."

 

It decreed a fresh assessment mission in the region and "further contact with potential troop contributing countries," and calls on Ban to consult the AU commission on what further support the United Nations might give AMISOM.

 

South Africa's ambassador to the UN, Dumisani Kumalo, voiced disappointment at the resolution. "I would like to see the UN deploy in Somalia," he said. "The AU is doing a job that the UN is supposed to be doing."

 

Source: AFP, Aug 20, 2007