Monday, January 15, 2007
The ministers aim to convince the targeted nations to support the African Union (AU)’s plan to deploy about 8,000 troops to help Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed exert control over the lawless African nation, an official in the presidency said.
Kibaki chairs the seven-nation east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad), which in 2004 helped broker the forming of the transitional government that took power in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu late last month.
"The ministers will seek any kind of support from the countries. The government is determined to ensure that the African continent does not squander this opportunity to pacify Somalia once and for all," a spokesman said.
He named the countries currently being asked to help as Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, Zambia, Tunisia and Algeria.
Uganda is the only African country to have so far offered to send around 1,000 troops to Somalia where joint Ethiopian and Somali forces routed an Islamist movement that had held sway in the south and central regions after routing clan warlords from Mogadishu in June.
Somalia disintegrated into lawlessness after the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. It was carved up among the clan warlords, many of whom have now given their backing to the government.
The two-year-old government, which was until recently based in the provincial town of Baidoa, has thus far failed to exert control across the nation of about 10 million people.
Source: AFP, Jan 15, 2007