Gov't welcomes AU backing on peacekeeping force

Somalia's transitional government has welcomed a decision by the African Union to ask the United Nations to exempt the Horn of Africa country from an arms embargo, to pave the way for the deployment of a peacekeeping force.

The UN imposed an arms embargo on Somalia in 1992, in the midst of a civil war that followed the 1991 collapse of the government of President Muhammad Siyad Barre.

Abdirashid Adenseed, an envoy of Somali interim President Abdullahi Yusuf, said he expected the AU "to send a delegation to the UN Security Council in order to convince it to make the exemption".

The decision to appeal to the UN was made in Khartoum, Sudan, during the sixth session of the African body on 23-25 January.

The member countries of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have already indicated their willingness to send a peacekeeping force to the war-torn country, but analysts said that for foreign troops to be deployed, the "UN must lift the arms embargo or at least make an exemption".

Abdirashid said the presence of such a force would help Somalia's disarmament and demobilisation process and "act as a deterrent" to those who undermine the peace. "International presence will also enhance the security and stability" of the country, he said.

Last year, the UN rejected IGAD's request for the embargo to be lifted.

The issue of peacekeepers has divided the fledgling interim government of Somalia, with the president in favour of deployment and Speaker Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden opposed.

Both parties, however, have accepted to resolve their differences and signed an agreement recently. The AU welcomed the Aden Declaration, which encourages reconciliation between the various groups in the country's transitional government, according to Abdirashid.

The declaration, signed by the president and the speaker in the Yemeni city of Aden, called on "the members of the parliament and government to put aside their fruitless squabbles and differences, urging them to unite, placing the supreme interest of the nation above other interests".

Abdirashid said that the agreement "signals a new beginning for the TFIs [transitional federal institutions] and for the country."