Disappointment over UN report

Somalia's interim foreign minister Yusuf Hassan Ibrahim has expressed disappointment over a recent report on his country by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Addressing a closed Security Council session on Monday, Ibrahim said his Transitional National Government (TNG) regretted the fact that the report did not recommend the establishment of a peace-building mission in Somalia. In his report, issued last month, Annan said the security situation in Mogadishu was still too uncertain for a long-term UN presence.

Annan's report was based on the findings of a UN security assessment mission to Somalia. "We would have welcomed [it] if the cause of any insecurity in Somalia, especially the influx of illegal arms into Somalia, was explored candidly by the mission," Ibrahim said. "The TNG calls upon all countries in the sub-region to comply scrupulously with the arms embargo imposed by resolution 733 [in 1992]. The current practice of providing information on the violation of the arms embargo has proven to be ineffective for this sanctions regime."

He said that while the TNG appreciated that the UN was concerned for the safety of its staff, Somalia was not the only country in conflict. "There are other precedents where the United Nations had at least a peace building presence."

"We believe the establishment of the UN peace-building mission in Somalia, even a pilot office, would have...given a much-needed impetus to the national reconciliation process and would have shown Somalis the UN's commitment for creating lasting peace in Somalia," he said. Ibrahim also called for a Security Council fact-finding mission to visit his country.

He drew attention to the economic situation in Somalia, saying the economy had been devastated by drought, a ban on the export of livestock, and the closure of the al-Barakat banking system whose accounts were ordered frozen by the US in the wake of last year's terrorist attacks in New York. Ibrahim called for an immediate increase in the humanitarian assistance programme to Somalia, more programmes for preventing livestock disease and the unfreezing of some accounts.

Speaking to journalists after the session, the TNG ambassador to the UN, Ahmed Abdi Hashi, proposed that a US bank, acceptable to the Treasury Department, should take over the al-Barakat system. "The US Treasury Department will then get involved and supervise these funds," he said, according to news organisations.

[see also IRIN story of 12 March headlined "SOMALIA: Security Council debates reconciliation" at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24667]