By C. Bryson Hull
Monday, November 13, 2006
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NAIROBI, Nov 13 (Reuters) - The world should implement a total arms blockade of Somalia and freeze some Somali assets to stop "rampant arms flows" fuelling a potentially savage war in the Horn of Africa, a U.N.-commissioned report says.
The report lists various militant groups and 10 nations helping fuel the build-up to potential conflict in Somalia in violation of the world's most flouted arms embargo.
"Stronger enforcement of the arms embargo applied in conjunction with certain economic sanctions ... could offset the momentum towards a catastrophic conflict in Somalia," an advance copy of the 80-page report to the U.N. Security Council obtained by Reuters says.
The report by independent experts monitoring the 1992 U.N. military embargo on Somalia also urges high-level diplomatic pressure against the countries involved in arming the shaky interim government and its rival, a powerful Islamist movement.
Somalia is perched on the edge of a war not just between the militarily superior Islamists and the government, but coalitions behind them that spread into the Horn of Africa and neighbouring east African countries, the report says.
"There is the distinct possibility that the momentum towards a military solution inside Somalia may spill over into a direct state-to-state conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as acts of terrorism in other vulnerable states of the region."
Ethiopia and Eritrea, still bitter over their 1998-2000 border war, are backing the government and Islamists respectively, the report says.
It lists evidence of seven nations sending weapons and military supplies to the Mogadishu-based Islamist plus support from Lebanon's Hezbollah, while three nations are backing the fragile, Western-backed interim government.
Several officials familiar with the report said an 11th country's involvement surfaced after the document was submitted to the Security Council.
Source: Reuters, Nov 13, 2006