UN to support Somalia peacekeeping mission

ADDIS ABABA: The United Nations has pledged logistical support to help maintain the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an AU official said.

"Very soon, we will receive a global logistical support package from the UN for AMISOM," AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra told reporters after meeting UN experts here.

"This package is very important because it can include heavy equipment as well as the supply of fuel, food and other equipment for our forces in Somalia," he said.

Lamamra did not specify the cost of the UN's support for AMISOM, which comprises Ugandan and Burundian contingents totalling around 3,400 men in Mogadishu but has been unable to contain the violence that has raged since it was deployed in March 2009.

Ethiopian forces that had been occupying Somalia since late 2006 in a bid to prop up a weak transitional government and flush out hardline Islamists completed their withdrawal from Mogadishu earlier this week.

Their pullout had been one of the main demands of opposition groups engaged in a UN-sponsored peace process but has also sparked fears of a security vacuum that could lead to a deadly power struggle and renewed civil fighting. The African Union had also threatened to terminate its peacekeeping mission if it received no outside support.

According to an agreement reached late last year in Djibouti, AMISOM and joint units including government and opposition forces are to take over the Ethiopian army's security duties until the UN's peacekeeping force is deployed.

On Friday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution stating its intent to send a peacekeeping mission to Somalia but delaying its decision on the deployment until June.

UN experts who attended the meeting in Addis Ababa said the latest package should allow AMISOM to beef up its contingent and upgrade its equipment as it waits for the UN to take over.

The pan-African body had initially pledged 8,000 troops.

Lamamra's assessment was that the situation on the ground since the Ethiopian troops' withdrawal from Mogadishu and its compliance with an agreement reached in Djibouti late last year were satisfactory.

The deal says joint units consisting of forces from the transitional federal government (TFG) and from the moderate wing of the main Islamist-led opposition grouping (ARS) should move in to take over security duties.

"The positions left behind by the Ethiopian army were taken by TFG forces or by ARS forces or forces close to the ARS," Lamamra said.

"Things are going very well between the two factions and we are assisting this new security set-up," he added.

Some Somali government officials however have accused Islamist leaders of violating the terms of the Djibouti deal by unilaterally occupying the vacant Ethiopian positions and attempting to further personal and clan interests.

Meanwhile, the London-based watchdog Amnesty International complained in a statement that the latest UN resolution on Somalia failed to mention the state of human rights in the Horn of Africa country.

Sunday, AFP