African Union insists on UN peacekeepers in Somalia

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

The head of the African Union, Jean Ping- Photo:/AFP

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - The head of the African Union, whose soldiers are engaged in increasingly dangerous peacekeeping duties in war-torn Somalia, issued a fresh appeal Wednesday for a UN military presence there.

Chairman Jean Ping "once again appeals to the UN Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities and authorise, without any further delay, the deployment of a UN operation in Somalia," an AU statement said.

It added that the organisation's peace and security commissioner Ramtane Lamamra had been sent to New York for talks with Security Council members.

The AU is increasingly concerned about what it calls the "security vacuum" that the scheduled withdrawal of about 3,000 Ethiopian troops from Somalia will create. The Ethiopians are due to leave by the end of the year.

AMISOM, the AU's peacekeeping operation, has only 3,400 Burundian and Ugandan soldiers in the country, well short of the 8,000 initially envisaged.

They face the fighters of the Shebab, the former youth and military wing of the Islamic Courts Union, which has waged a bruising guerrilla war against Somali government troops and Ethiopian forces.

At least nine AU peacekeepers have been killed in Somalia since they were first deployed in March 2007.

The latest death was last week, when a Burundian soldier died from wounds sustained in a clash near his contingent's base in southern Mogadishu.

Since Ethiopia announced its pull-out, the Shebab have closed in around Mogadishu after taking most the country, leaving government and AU troops in control of just a handful of locations.

The AU statement stressed the need for more support from the international community, "in particular the United Nations, bearing in mind the primary responsibility of the UN Security Council in the maintenance of international peace and security."

It added: "The deployment of a peacekeeping operation in support of the ongoing political process, and the significant achievements made in this respect, will go a long way in creating conditions for durable reconciliation, peace and stability in Somalia."

Ethiopia sent troops to Somalia in 2006 to oust the Islamic Courts Union, a radical group that had conquered most of the country and was imposing a strict form of Sharia law.

Although their role was to prop up the embattled transitional federal government, the internationally-backed authorities never succeeded in asserting their power on the restive country.

Source: AFP, Dec 10, 2008