African nations approached for Somalia peacekeeping

The United States will provide $40m (€30.7m) to Somalia in political, humanitarian and peacekeeping assistance, the top US diplomat to Africa said today.

Also, more African nations will be asked to provide troops to help stabilise the country.

The European Union said it would also help pay for a peacekeeping force envisioned at 8,000 troops, but only if Somalia’s government held talks with all segments of Somali society to stop 15 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa country.

The meeting of US, EU, African and Arab diplomats in Nairobi, known as the International Contact Group on Somalia, also said Kenyan foreign affairs minister Raphael Tuju will travel around Africa seeking troops for a peacekeeping operation in Somalia. Uganda has already pledged at least 1,000 peacekeepers

Jendayi Frazer, the top US diplomat to Africa, had said the US hoped the Ugandans could be deployed before the end of this month.

Support for the peacekeepers was implicitly tied to political dialogue.

“If international support is to be effective, it is essential that an inclusive process of political dialogue and reconciliation … be launched without delay,” a joint statement said.

Somalia’s foreign minister, Ismael Mohamoud Hurreh, said his government already was based on reconciliation and planned no special effort to talk to political opponents and critics.

The international community is scrambling to find a way to help Somalia, which has a chance at unity after 15 years of clan rule and chaos.

Ethiopian troops intervened in Somalia on December 24 to defeat an Islamic movement which threatened to overthrow the internationally recognised government, which at the time only controlled one town.

Now Ethiopia says it wants to withdraw its troops within weeks. Many fear the government will be unable to operate without some outside military muscle.

Somalia’s president told members of the contact group that his country has a rare opportunity for peace, but needs international help to do it.

Tuju said it would not be easy to raise 8,000 troops, not because heads of state were unwilling, but because it is logistically and politically difficult to deliver African peacekeepers.

He declined to say what countries he would be visiting.

A UN peacekeeping force including American troops met disaster in Somalia in 1992, when fighters loyal to a clan leader shot down two US Army Black Hawk helicopters and battled US troops, killing 18. The US left soon afterward and the UN scaled down.

The Somali government has asked US warships to seal off Somalia’s sea lanes to make sure suspected international terrorists and foreign militants cannot leave or enter the country.

The assistant US secretary of state for Africa, has accused the Islamic movement of harbouring three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.