TNG urges intervention by foreign troops

The Transitional National Government (TNG) of Somalia has called for the deployment of foreign troops to disarm and demobilise armed militias, TNG Information Minister Abdirahman Ibbi told IRIN on Monday.

The decision to call for foreign troops was reached on Saturday by the Council of Ministers, and was ratified by the Transitional National Assembly (TNA), on Sunday, he said.

"The proliferation of weapons in the country has reached such proportions that the interim government cannot on its own manage to disarm the militias and collect the arms," he stated.

"Somalia is asking for the same kind of assistance, in both military and financial terms, that countries with similar problems, such as Sierra Leone and Bosnia, received from the international community."

According to Ibbi, the forces should come from "friendly countries with no political or military agenda in Somalia". They would help disarm the factions which had so far opposed the TNG, he said. The UN should not be afraid of deploying its forces in Somalia, because "Somalis will this time welcome and work with anyone who comes to remove weapons from their streets", he added.

A UN peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s in the country had to be abandoned after a prominent warlord militarily challenged the UN force, leading to the deaths of many UN peacekeepers and Somalis.

A motion to bring foreign troops, tabled in the TNA in August last year, failed after MPs sponsoring it failed to muster enough votes.

A regional analyst told IRIN it was unlikely the UN Security Council would authorise intervention in the country. "There is insufficient interest or desire to intervene in Somalia at this stage," he said.

He stressed that the interventions in Sierra Leone and Bosnia came about because a permanent member of the Security Council "showed sufficient interest to push for intervention. That level of interest does not exist in the case of Somalia".

The call for foreign troops has already drawn strong criticism from the opposition, including Mogadishu-based faction leader, Muse Sudi Yalahow. "A self-appointed group [TNG] can't come up with such a call. Somalis can resolve their differences amicably," the French news agency, AFP, quoted him as saying.