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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Oct 21 2010 - 13:00:00 EDT
U.S. backs calls for more AU troops for Somalia
Thu 21 Oct 2010 | 16:54 GMT
* Security Council to debate issue soon
* U.N. mission struggling to contain insurgency
WASHINGTON Oct 21 (Reuters) - The United States supports proposals to raise
more African Union troops for Somalia and the U.N. Security Council will
likely debate the matter within 30 days, a senior U.S. diplomat said on
Wednesday.
Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said Uganda and other countries
had been pressing to increase 7,200-strong AMISOM mission, which is
struggling to stabilize Somalia in the face of an insurgency by the al
Qaeda-allied al Shabaab militia.
"In principle we support the increase in the number of troops on the ground,
but do not take a position on what that number should be," Carson,
Washington's top diplomat for Africa, told an audience at a Washington think
tank.
"This issue is likely to be discussed and debated in the U.N. Security
Council in the next 30 days," he said.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said this month that the U.N. Security
Council was considering more funding for an expanded AU peacekeeping
mission, and that Uganda was ready to provide all of the 20,000 soldiers
thought necessary to squelch the raging insurgency in the Horn of Africa
country.
Uganda provides the bulk of the forces already on the ground, with a lesser
number coming from Burundi, and Museveni has been urging greater effort to
stabilize the country after al Shabaab claimed responsibility for twin bomb
blasts in Uganda in July that killed nearly 80 people.
The presence of foreign AMISOM troops gives Somali militants a reason to
pose as nationalist champions and wins them easy recruits and financial
support at home and from Somalis abroad, analysts say.
Carson said the United States would continue to improve ties with Somaliland
and Puntland -- two semi-autonomous regions in Somalia that are seen as
relatively stable -- while working to buttress the Western-backed
Transitional Federal Government, which controls only a part of the capital
Mogadishu.
He said the international community, including Arab states, should do more
to turn the tide in Somalia, which he described as an increasingly global
threat to security and trade as pirates prowl the seas off the Horn of
Africa.
Carson said the United States, which has donated $229 million to support the
AU peacekeeping effort as well as more than $200 million in unilateral
humanitarian and development assistance, would have to remain involved if
the threat posed by Somalia's collapse is to be contained.
"It's always nice to have a clear road map to an exit," Carson said, while
quickly saying that no such easy answers exist for the situation in Somalia.
"This is going to be a long, sometimes uncertain, difficult process," he
said. (Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Philip Barbara)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
Chaos in Somali parliament delays vote on PM
Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:51pm GMT
* Vote to endorse new prime minister put off to Saturday
* Analysts point to rift between president and speaker
MOGADISHU, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Somalia's parliamentary speaker postponed on
Wednesday a vote to endorse the newly appointed prime minister after the
Horn of Africa nation's assembly descended into chaos.
Lawmakers got into shouting matches over whether the vote should be
conducted in secret or openly.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed last week picked U.S.-educated former diplomat
Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed to lead his government after the previous premier
quit, paying the price for failing to rein in a three-year Islamist
insurgency.
Postponing the vote until Saturday, Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden
proposed that it be held in secret.
Once nominated by the president, the prime minister's appointment must be
approved by parliament.
Earlier, Mohamed told legislators he came free of political baggage. "I do
not belong to any group, religious or political, or any other group other
than I am a Somali citizen who wants to take part in the development of this
nation which has had no effective government for about two decades," he
said.
Some analysts cited a widening divide between Ahmed and the speaker, who
deputises for the president when he travels or if he is incapacitated, and
said the postponement was only a delaying tactic.
"There is a big rift between the president who wants members of parliament
to approve the new prime minister and the speaker who seems to have a
different view judging by what happened today," said Ahmed Elmi, a
Mogadishu-based political analyst.
"I believe this will hinder this already weak government (effort) to move
forward," he said.
Horn of Africa experts say the Western-backed interim government has failed
to make any significant strides towards stabilising anarchic, war-torn
Somalia. Critics say the government is plagued by internal feuding and
corruption.
Ahmed's administration is propped up by African Union peacekeepers in
Mogadishu, but Islamist rebels control large chunks of the capital and much
of south and central Somalia.
(Reporting by Abdi Guled; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Mark
Heinrich)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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