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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
SOMALIA: New president asks AU for 20,000 peacekeepers
ADDIS ABABA, 25 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - Somalia's newly elected president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, has asked the African Union (AU) for 20,000 peacekeepers to help secure the country, officials said on Saturday.
The peacekeepers would also help disarm various militias, AU spokesman Adam Thiam said after a meeting between the president and AU chairman Alpha Oumar Konare.
The comments came as European Union (EU) foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, held talks in Addis Ababa about helping rebuild the war-ravaged nation. Solana said the EU could help with physical reconstruction and also help to "put the administration into shape", although he declined to say how much it would contribute.
Solana, who also met Sudanese-rebel leader John Garang and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi during his two-day trip to Addis Ababa, said the challenges were enormous.
"It is not an easy job and that is why they need moral support and recognition," the EU chief said after a meeting with Yusuf. "The country has suffered a lot and it is time to reconstruct and reconcile the country. The stability of this part of the world is fundamental for Africa and in a globalised world, stability everywhere has repercussions for the rest of the world."
Solana said that while security in Somalia should remain the task of Africans, the EU was willing to continue support and training in technical areas.
"We will be able to help, but the ownership of this belongs to the Africans," he said. "A lot of work has to be done on the country still to disarm people who are armed - there are too many weapons there."
Yusuf was elected as Somalia's president after almost two years of stop-start talks held in neighbouring Kenya because of insecurity at home. The Horn-of-Africa country has been divided into fiefdoms ruled by rival warlords since 1991, when long-time ruler Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted. Yusuf, 71, winner in the run-off round of the poll by lawmakers, had served as president of the northeastern self-declared autonomous region of Puntland since 1998.
There have been 13 previous peace efforts and two previous governments formed, but they never managed to take effective control over most of the country.
"The main focus for the AU is security, Thiam said. "What they will be asking for is 20,000. The president mentioned there were more than 15 million small arms in Somalia and the disarmament will be a very important issue."
Thiam added that the aim was to build a peacekeeping force to disarm the warlords and train a national army, which is needed for the "reconstruction of Somalia".
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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