RSTV NEWS.U.S. Proposing Regional Force to Monitor Somalia Violence

U.S. Proposing Regional Force to Monitor Somalia Violence

The United States circulated a draft resolution on Somalia on Friday, urging a regional peacekeeping force to monitor a struggle for control between the country’s embattled government and its powerful Islamist foes, and calling for a partial lifting of an arms embargo to enable the equipping of local security units.

The 8,000-member force would come from seven East African nations but not from neighboring states of Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia. This restriction was added out of concern that the proposed United Nations move, aimed at calming tensions, might end up provoking wider hostilities.

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based study group with expertise in the area, raised alarm this week by predicting that deploying a force, particularly one that included soldiers from neighboring countries, “could trigger all-out war in Somalia and destablize the entire Horn of Africa region.”

John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, expressed annoyance with this view. “You know, people criticize us when we take action on the ground, that our taking action makes the situation worse,” he said. “O.K., so what is the answer, not to take action?”

He said, “What we want to do is endorse the insertion of the regional peacekeeping force, which many of the African states have called for, in order to provide some measure of stability there to permit a political solution.”

Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991, when warlords overthrew the president and then turned on each other.

The interim government, formed two years ago and supported by the United Nations, controls only Baidoa, the provincial town where it is headquartered, while the Islamic alliance, known as the Union of Islamic Courts, has taken over Mogadishu, the capital, and increased its grip on the rest of the country.

Ethiopia supports the interim government and has sent troops into the country. Washington earlier backed a coalition of warlords to try to combat the Islamists, who the United States believed harbored terrorists.

The draft urged the Islamists to “cease any further military expansion and reject those with an extremist agenda or links with international terrorism.” It noted the Security Council’s willingness “to engage with all parties in Somalia, including the Union of Islamic Courts, if they are committed to achieving a political settlement through peaceful and inclusive dialogue.”

There is fear that Ethiopia and Eritrea, which are in a tense faceoff over their disputed border, are fighting a proxy war in Somalia. Eritrea also would most likely be barred from participating in the peacekeeping force under the resolution.

The United Nations arms embargo on Somalia, which has been notoriously porous, began in 1992.

Mr. Bolton said that the text would be circulated to various capitals over the weekend, and that he hoped that reactions could start to be incorporated into the document at drafters’ meetings beginning Monday. “And then we’ll proceed as rapidly as we can after that,” he said.

WARREN HOGE

The New York times

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