(dpa) - Somalia called Tuesday for the deployment of a multinational force to assist its work in
ending the decades-long civil war and carrying out national reconciliation and
institutional building.
Somalia's transitional government's President Abdullah Yussuf Ahmed will
attend a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday with counterparts from South Africa, the current chair of the council, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South African President Thabo Mbeki will be on hand to preside over the
meeting, which was called by his country to discuss the working relationship
between the UN and African Union.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi
also will be present. Other attendees include AU chairperson Alpha Oumar
Konare and delegations to be headed by deputy ministers or their ambassadors at
the UN.
Somalia's Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed
Jama told reporters on Tuesday that his president will pitch for a
multinational force and for the 15-nation council to assume its role as keeper
of peace and security around the world.
"We want to ask the Security Council to take over security and deploy an
international force to Somalia," said Jama. "We think the
Security Council should assume its responsibility in Somalia."
Jama was calling for the deployment of several more battalions
of troops in addition to the two battalions from Uganda already in Somalia.
The UN has been hesitant to agree to send a peacekeeping operation to Somalia because of the lack of a peace process in that country. But the idea has
been backed by South Africa.
The meeting has been dubbed a summit to strengthen ties with
and seek resources to support the AU's peacekeeping role in the African
continent.
South African UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said the council meeting is
expected to adopt a resolution to reinforce the UN-AU relationship and to back
a decision by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a panel to study ways
to support AU peacekeeping efforts in Africa.
The AU's most recent involvement was in Sudan's Darfur, where its 7,000 troops
were unable to stop the ethnic conflict, hampered by the lack of logistics, war
equipment and money to do their work. Those troops have been merged into
a joint UN-AU peacekeeping operations in Darfur, which when fully deployed
would reach 30,000 military and civilian personnel, the largest UN operation in
the world.
A draft resolution to be adopted by the council on Wednesday
calls for further enhancing the UN-AU relationship and to strengthen the AU's
peacekeeping capacity in Africa. It would also welcome the cooperation between
the AU and other organizations like the European Union aimed at building up AU
capacities.
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