By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Arms flowing into lawless Somalia have increased dramatically over the last eight months through smuggling and shipments from Yemen, Ethiopia and Eritrea in violation of a U.N. weapons embargo, a panel of experts reported on Friday.
The four-member panel, appointed by the U.N. Security Council, proposed that the council impose an embargo on charcoal exports and foreign fishing vessels in Somali waters, a source of revenue for warlords to buy arms.
Militia chiefs demand a tax on vessels carrying charcoal to purchasers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Somali coastal waters offer rich fishing grounds and foreign ships have been attacked by militia fighters, who demand a ransom to release the ships.
Both Somalia's transitional government, which includes dissident warlords, and those warlords opposed to them are gearing up for a military showdown, the 60-page report said.
"The political process has apparently taken a back seat to these military preparations," the panel added.
Somalia has been in a state of chaos for 14 years with clan rivalries fueled by guns left over from the Cold War and an arms market in Mogadishu to buy new ones. Some human rights groups estimate 500,000 Somalis have lost their lives.
The United States and then a combined U.S.-U.N. force intervened in 1992-1993 but left several years later with the country in shambles. Neighboring nations have now helped form a Transitional Federal Government, known as the TFG.
The report recorded some 175 transactions in weapons exchanges over the last eight months, which it said was a 378 percent increase over the previous year, involving 10 ministers and the president of the TFG, Abdullahi Yusuf.
Yemen's government admitted it had sent at least 5,000 "personal weapons" to what it called the legitimate government of Somalia so it could disarm bandits.
But the report said Yusuf had negotiated a much larger deal for rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired missiles and other armaments.
WEAPONS FROM ETHIOPIA
Neighboring Ethiopia was also supplying the TFG militia, although the government denied it. But the panel monitoring the embargo said TFG forces were "supplied with a steady flow of arms from Ethiopia," and photographed them, including heavy machine guns.
The Ethiopian military had conducted military training for TFG militias and the warlords that ran them, the report said.
In addition, another country in the region, which U.N. officials said was Eritrea, was sending arms to opposition warlords and groups "for the purpose of countering support provided to the TFG by Ethiopia."
The panel did not name Eritrea because it had not completed its investigation but said monitors were "convinced that the information was of sufficient quality and credibility to merit its inclusion in the report."
In general, the prospect of creating a viable government in Somalia was a threat to some factions in the TFG itself as well as warlords, businessmen, traders and religious fundamentalists, the report said.
They were used to "operating in a lawless territory carved out their own kingdoms, replete with personal political power and ambitions, military-style muscle in the form of their own militia and, probably most importantly, the ongoing accumulation of personal wealth," the panel concluded.