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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Jul 23 2010 - 13:37:20 EDT
Four African nations eyeing Somalia mission - Uganda
Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:04am GMT
* Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia eyeing deployment
* Officers sent to Mogadishu to study situation
By Elias Biryabarema
KAMPALA, July 23 (Reuters) - Four African nations have sent army officers to
Somalia before deciding whether to commit troops to the Horn of Africa
nation, where rebels are battling the fragile government, a senior Ugandan
military official said.
The Somali crisis and the African Union's (AU) peacekeeping mission in
Somalia will top the AU summit being hosted by Uganda, two weeks after
Somali rebels launched their first attack on foreign soil with twin bomb
attacks in Kampala.
The al Qaeda-inspired al Shabaab group said the attacks were to avenge the
deployment of more than 6,000 troops in Mogadishu by Uganda and Burundi.
Regional powers want more than 20,000 peacekeepers to quash the insurgency
and some are calling for a stronger mandate allowing the troops to take on
the rebels.
"We think very soon we'll see infantry troops because now those officers
have been there, they have worked with us for more than six months on the
ground and I think they have seen that the mission can be done," General
Edward Katumba Wamala told the Ugandan parliament's defence committee late
Thursday.
Katumba, who is Uganda's chief of land forces, said Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal
and Zambia had all deployed officers on a fact-finding mission.
The Kampala attacks, which Uganda says were carried out by suicide bombers,
have thrust Somalia back onto the international agenda and diplomats say
that African leaders now feel under pressure to take action at the AU
summit.
The United States has said it is prepared to step up assistance to the AU
peacekeeping force, AMISOM, and one official said lethal operations could be
expanded.
Katumba drew links between al Qaeda, al Shabaab and a recently dormant rebel
group in Uganda, Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which the east African
nation says has regrouped across the border in Democratic Republic of Congo.
"There's a link between the al Qaeda cells, the al Shabaab and the ADF and
if we think we can dismiss the situation in Somalia ... and sit and be safe,
then we're deceiving ourselves", he warned the legislators.
In the late 1990s, ADF waged an insurgency from its bases in the Rwenzori
mountains along its western border. ADF originally fought to establish an
Islamic state in Uganda and was blamed for a series of deadly blasts in the
capital Kampala.
The Ugandan army believes the ADF continues to recruit young Muslims.
(Editing by Richard Lough and Giles Elgood)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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