A soldier serving with the African Union Mission in Somalia walks past Somali women queuing up outside a makeshift pharmacy at a free clinic in Mogadishu, yesterday.
UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Security Council agreed yesterday to partially lift a decades-old arms embargo on Somalia for one year, allowing the government in Mogadishu to buy light weapons to strengthen its security forces to fight
Al Qaeda-linked Islamists.
The 15-member council unanimously adopted a British-drafted resolution that also renewed a 17,600-strong African Union peacekeeping force for a year and reconfigured the UN mission in the Horn of Africa country.
Somalia’s government had asked for the arms embargo to be removed and the United States supported that, but other Security Council members were wary about completely lifting the embargo on a country that is already awash with weapons, diplomats said.
“What we have tried to do is draw a balance between those who wanted an unrestricted lifting of the arms embargo and those who felt it was premature to lift the arms embargo,” Britain’s UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters after the vote.
“It is a good and strong compromise.”
The Security Council imposed the embargo on Somalia in 1992 to cut the flow of weapons to feuding warlords, who a year earlier had ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and plunged the country into civil war. Somalia held its first vote since 1991 last year to elect a president and prime minister. “Yes there are major challenges, but we are now ... moving away from international trusteeship of the situation in Somalia towards supporting the government’s efforts to address its own problems,” Lyall Grant said.
The Security Council resolution would allow sales of such weapons as automatic assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, but leaves in place a ban on surface-to-air missiles, large-calibre guns, howitzers, cannons and mortars as well as anti-tank guided weapons, mines and night vision weapon sights.
It also requires that the Somalia government or the country delivering assistance notify the Security Council “at least five days in advance of any deliveries of weapons and military equipment ... providing details of such deliveries and assistance and the specific place of delivery in Somalia.”
“The progress achieved (in Somalia) does not justify so far the lifting of the arms embargo,” Guatemala’s UN Ambassador Gert Rosenthal told the council after the vote.
“We believe that the Security Council should have adopted a phased approach to prevent the possible repercussions of an abrupt suspension of the embargo which could subsequently compromise the stabilization efforts in Somalia.”
REUTERS
