By Evelyn Leopold
New York - The UN Security Council on Thursday refused to ease an arms embargo against Somalia but said it would reconsider the ban after a report from east African nations who want to field peacekeepers.
The African Union has requested an exemption from the 1992 weapons embargo so it can bring arms into the Horn of Africa nation for a peacekeeping force that would also protect Somalia's transitional government. The estimated 10 000 troops would come from seven East African nations.
In a three-page policy statement read at a formal meeting, the 15-member council welcomed the initiative and said it expected a detailed mission plan on the operation.
On the exemption from the arms embargo, "the Security Council stands ready to consider this matter on the basis of information on the mission plan", the statement said.
The transitional government last month went home from Kenya, where it was formed at peace talks last year. But a rift developed immediately among the new leaders over where the government should ultimately be located.
This government is the 14th attempt to return a central authority there since warlords ousted military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and ushered in an era of anarchy that US troops and UN peacekeepers were unable to stop.
Despite the arms ban, weapons flow freely past Somalia's lawless borders. Pistols and rocket launchers are sold openly at the notorious Bakaara market in Mogadishu. But the African Union or any other official group or country would need an exemption from the Security Council to bring in weapons.
"There can be no effective and lasting progress in Somalia as long as arms and ammunition flow unchecked across Somalia's borders," the Security Council said.
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's request for foreign troops is so divisive that it led to a fistfight during a parliamentary vote against their deployment in March. A subsequent vote led by Yusuf's allies approved them, but neither side has accepted either vote as legal.
The International Crisis Group, think-tank based in Brussels and New York, says Mogadishu is now home to "al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed counter-terrorism networks".
But ICG said that a successful counter-terrorism strategy required more attention paid to helping Somalian build a new nation, without siding with one faction or another in the transitional government.
- Additional reporting by C. Bryson Hull in Nairobi