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AU Chairman Says Peacekeeping Troops Should Be Deployed

Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)
NEWS
December 14, 2006
Posted to the web December 14, 2006

By Aweys Osman Yusuf
Mogadishu
At an African states summit in the Kenyan capital Nairobi Thursday, the
chairperson of AU Commission Alpha Omar Konare has incited heads of African
governments to dare sending peacekeeping troops to Somalia to find military
balance between the government and Union of Islamic Courts.
He stressed that Islamic Courts are more powerful than the transitional
government, demanding that African states should send troops to back up the
fragile government.
He pointed out that the government could not have balanced peaceful dialog with
the Islamic Courts if African countries did not support it militarily.
Speaking directly to six African heads of states, he rebuked the heads for not
uniting with Somalia's weakgovernment in the country.
The transitional government was formed in Kenya in 2004 following protracted
negotiations and with the participation of all the country's warlords, but it
remained tenuous in the small town of Baidoa, southern Somalia, ever since it
moved to the country.
"If we do not act now, then we must prepare ourselves for the emergence of
ethnic republics and religious republics in the coming years," he said,
referring to UIC.
After UN Security Council members approved US backed resolution of sending
regional peacekeepers to Somalia, the Islamic Courts and the government clashed
in Dinsor district, 120 km south of Baidoa, the current government.
Islamists also seized fresh settlements from the government Wednesday and
Thursday. They vowed they would capture whole Somalia and impose an Islamic
constitution on Somalia.
Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991 when warlords toppled former
president Siad Barre, and then turned on each other over control of the
country.


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