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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Jul 27 2010 - 09:47:57 EDT
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5joPoUo-ydOUl3glBPaNJr-RgRb8g
African leaders agree to increase Somalia force
By Boris Bachorz (AFP) – 4 hours ago 7/27/2010
KAMPALA — African Union leaders wrapping up a three-day summit Tuesday in
Kampala agreed to send thousands of extra troops to reinforce its military
contingent battling Al Qaeda-linked insurgents in Somalia.
More than 30 heads of state approved a request by an east African regional
body to send 2,000 extra soldiers to the war-torn capital Mogadishu.
However, the leaders were still grappling with whether to completely change
the mandate of the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), currently tasked with
protecting the fragile Somali government from the Islamist rebels.
"This summit has just approved the requests made by the Inter-Governmental
Authority on Development (IGAD)," Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin
told AFP.
The IGAD earlier this month pledged to send the additional troops to boost
AMISOM's current force of 6,000 Burundian and Ugandan soldiers to its
intended full strength.
The permanent secretary of Uganda's foreign ministry James Mugume said the
summit was yet to agree on whether to give the force a more aggressive
mandate under chapter seven of the UN charter.
"The decision about the mandate is still being taken, but I think there is a
realisation that chapter seven is difficult," Mugume told AFP.
"What we are hoping for is chapter six and a half. It involves an adjustment
in the rules of engagement that allows us to act more robustly.
"A change to six and a half would still require consultations with the UN
Security Council," he explained.
Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye however said that AMISOM could now
launch pre-emptive strikes following new rules of engagement.
"Now the forces are free to attack in a pre-emptive manner," Kulayigye told
AFP. "If there is a realisation that you are about to be attacked you are
mandated to attack first."
Somalia's hardline Shebab militia fighting to topple the Western-backed
government of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed demonstrated their new regional
dimension when they claimed July 11 bombings in Kampala that killed 76
people.
They said the attack was to punish Uganda for its contribution to the AMISOM
force, which the insurgents blame for killing civilians in Mogadishu.
The Ethiopian foreign minister urged the immediate deployment of the
additional forces.
"We all think that AMISOM must be reinforced immediately, along with the
means of action of the Somali transitional government," Seyoum said.
However, leaders at the Kampala summit acknowledged that military
intervention alone would not resolve Somalia's conflict which has raged for
nearly two decades.
"The priority must therefore be to reinforce the security forces, the
police, and the civil and financial institutions of the transitional
government," Seyoum added.
The Shebab, whose leadership has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden,
currently controls around 80 percent of the Horn of Africa nation, with the
embattled government confined to a few blocks in Mogadishu.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson supported the
AMISOM troop surge as a means of defeating the radical militia posing a
regional and international threat.
"There is no doubt there is a need for more troops," Carson said. "We in
Washington have committed ourselves to support additional troops on the
ground in the same fashion that we have supported Burundi and Ugandan
troops."
African Union Commission chief Jean Ping said earlier that Guinea was ready
to send a battalion to Somalia and predicted that the mission could soon
swell to 10,000 soldiers.
The bloc's commissioner for peace and security, Ramtane Lamamra, said it was
only "a question of a few short weeks" before the reinforcements arrive in
Somalia and render AMISOM -- which deployed in March 2007 -- "more robust".
South Africa -- which has been requested to send warships to prevent the
Shebab from importing weapons via Somalia's Kismayo port -- said it would be
ready to do "everything it is asked from it" by IGAD and the African Union.
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