Thursday, October 07, 2010
SA WILL not be sending soldiers to Somalia, International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said yesterday.
This is despite mounting pressure from the region and the international community for SA to play a more prominent role in reining in the insurgency and piracy in the Horn of Africa region.
In July, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said that SA could play a positive role in uprooting what he called al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cells in Somalia that threatened international peace and security.
The African Union heads of state summit in July in Kampala also agreed to send more troops to Somalia.
“I do not have a specific request for SA to send soldiers to Somalia,” Ms Nkoana-Mashabane said. She also confirmed that President Jacob Zuma was not considering any such request .
Ms Nkoana-Mashabane said sending soldiers to Somalia was not the “first priority for SA”.
She also said that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), a regional African Union -sanctioned body based in Djibouti, had met the quota of 8000 soldiers for Somalia.
The Igad contingent consists of soldiers from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.
However, SA will send a delegation to a two-day regional ministerial conference on piracy that starts today in Mauritius .
The delegation will be led by SA’s ambassador to Mauritius, Madumane Matabane.
Ms Nkoana-Mashabane was speaking after a meeting with the European Union’s (EU’s) high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Baroness Catherine Ashton.
Jakkie Cilliers, executive director of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, yesterday supported the decision not to send soldiers to Somalia.
“We agree … as there’s no peace to keep in Somalia,” Dr Cilliers said. The conflict needed a political solution as the country was engaged in a civil war .
Tom Wheeler, a foreign policy expert at the South African Institute for International Affairs, said SA did not have the capacity to send troops to Somalia.
“I just don’t think we have that number of troops as we are already in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur and Eritrea,” Mr Wheeler said.
Somalia is embroiled in a 19- year-old civil war which human rights agencies estimate has killed up to 1-million people.
[email protected]
Source: Business Daily