Lifting Arms Embargo On Somalia Rebuffed As UN Monitoring Group is Given Extra Six Months

After Hours of debate about the worsening situation in the war-ravaged country Somalia, UN Security Council has finally urged members to abide by preserving the arms embargo imposed on Somalia in 1992, condemning countries letting flow of weapons in Somalia. Security Council member states including the United States were expected to pass a draft resolution to partially ease the arms embargo on Somalia so that African peacekeepers from the Intergovernmental authority on Development (IGAD) member states would be deployed in Somalia.

The most anticipated resolution of alleviating the embargo on Somalia was postponed indefinitely as UN Security Council instead turned their concentration on a report posted on the internet by UN monitoring team, which revealed ten countries that breached the arms embargo by supplying Somalia's vying sides with weapons and money. Most of the countries blamed have denied any involvement in arming the transnational government or the Union of Islamic Courts.

UN monitoring team for Somalia's arms embargo has had their work approved by the Security Council and was given extra six months to proceed their work of preserving the embargo and report to the Security Council about countries that violate UN resolutions of the arms embargo on Somalia.

Analysts said if the embargo on Somalia were lifted, the country would fall back to civil war as famine, starvation and malnutrition would once again wipe out the civilian population in the Horn of Africa like early 1990s when US military forces went to Somalia for relief operations but ended in disaster.

The Islamic Courts leaders who spoke at a massive rally in the capital Tuesday stated they would invite world Muslims to come to Somalia and fight alongside the Islamist fighters against the foreign troops in the country, Ethiopia in particular.

The unanimous resolution by member states of UN Security Council has called on the weak transitional federal government based in Baidoa, 250 km southwest of the capital and the Union of Islamic Courts based in most central and southern parts of the country to go back to the negotiating table in the Sudanese capital Khartoum for the third round of peace talks without a delay.

United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs Jendiya Frazer said the US government campaigned for partially lifting the arms embargo on Somalia to let peacekeeping forces from East African states go in Somalia to consolidate the tenuous government. She said the transitional government lacks military muscles to face the powerful Islamic Courts forces that sieged the small town of Baidoa headquartered by the government.

Frazer also indicated that US government's objective in Somalia was to form a sort a military balance between the Somali government and the Union of Islamic Courts so that Islamic Courts would not claim military dominance but rather should yield to peace talks with the government.

Islamic Courts defeated US backed warlords in deadly battles in which several hundreds of Somali civilians have lost their lives early June this year and then expanded to most central and southern provinces in Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu.

The country's central authority collapsed in 1991 when tribal warlords ousted former president Siad Barre and then turned on one another throwing the country into factional clan and sub-clan wars.

Aweys Osman Yusuf
Mogadishu