Africa Union Mission to Fly to Somalia on Monday

Sun Feb 13, 2005 08:18 AM ET

By David Mageria

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The African Union will go ahead with a fact-finding mission to Somalia on Monday to size up security before a bigger African peace mission, officials said on Sunday.

The trip was to begin on Friday but was delayed amid concerns over security, a senior AU official said. BBC producer Kate Peyton was shot dead on Wednesday in one of the capital's less risky neighborhoods.

"The mission is likely to go tomorrow," a team leader of the AU fact-finding mission told Reuters. "We have assembled enough information regarding security and we are now convinced we can fly to Somalia."

The leader said the AU was concerned no one would protect the mission on its arrival in Somalia, where militias have carved the country into a patchwork of fiefdoms, forcing the AU to arrange security with the different groups.

Somalia's federation of Islamic groups held demonstrations on Friday and called for "holy war" if non-Muslim African troops were deployed in Somalia.

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The mission to assess security is made up of 16 people -- military experts and politicians -- from the African Union, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Arab League.

Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Sudan -- all members of IGAD -- will initially provide troops and equipment pending the deployment of a continent-wide African Union peace support mission, an AU official said.

Somalia's government was formed at peace talks in the safety of Kenya last year to end the lawless rule of local militias which banded together to depose military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf has said he wants a combined AU-Arab League force of 7,500 troops to facilitate the government's return. But others in his administration have argued that the militias are all the military muscle required.

Somalis traditionally resist outside interference. The last peacekeeping mission in Somalia ended in a bloody and humiliating withdrawal by U.S. and United Nations troops in the mid 1990s.

The Somali government plans to return to Somalia from Nairobi on Feb. 21. Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi told Reuters on Friday that the new government would not be deterred from returning to Somalia despite the murder of the BBC producer.

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