February 6, 2005
Nairobi - Somalia's government on Saturday approved the deployment of at least 5 000 foreign troops to help restore the first national administration in 14 years, but powerful warlords balked, officials said.
"The ministers approved between 5 000 and 7 000 thousands troops to help stabilise Somalia," a government minister from the Horn of Africa country, who did not want to be named, said here.
The plan was voted on at a cabinet meeting chaired by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in the Kenyan capital, but it will have to be taken to the country's parliament for final approval.
Thirty eight out of 47 ministers voted in favour of the deployment, but nine of them voted against, including powerful warlords in the cabinet, the minister added.
The African Union (AU) last month agreed in principle to deploy a peace support mission.
At the AU summit in Nigeria last week, leaders said that the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad), which groups Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Sudan, will initially provide troops and equipment for the mission.
The timetable for deployment will be prepared after parliament approves the decision, according to Somali officials.
The mission, which will be the first multinational force in Somalia since the end of a failed UN-mandated intervention in 1995, is expected to help install the country's transitional government, so far based in neighbouring Kenya for security reasons.
President Yusuf, elected last October, and his government led by Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi, have been based in Nairobi amid continued fears of instability in post-anarchic Somalia.
The country has been torn apart by battling warlords for 14 years, since the 1991 fall of the regime of Mohammed Siad Barre.
Yusuf has faced mounting pressure from Kenya and the international community to return to Somalia and has mounted three cabinet-level missions to arrange the relocation. - Sapa-AFP