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2003-11-11 / Reuters
A boat unloaded hundreds of military uniforms and tents at a Mogadishu port on Saturday, witnesses said, in an apparent breach of a U.N. arms embargo at the center of fresh concern about al-Qaida activity in Somalia.
It was the first known delivery of military-related materiel since the leaking last week of a draft report by U.N. experts that urged a tightening of the embargo to help rebuild the ruined country and prevent al-Qaida attacks in east Africa.
"The commodities included uniforms, tents, ready-made food and other military logistics, plastic portable water containers and medical boxes," a worker at the El Ma'an port north of Mogadishu told Reuters on Sunday.
Shipments of protective or non-lethal military equipment to prominent Somalis are violations of the arms embargo unless approved in advance by a U.N. Security Council committee.
"It's a violation," a senior U.N. official said.
"But the point is that there is no mechanism for dealing with such violations," he added, referring to the ease with which the 10-year-old embargo is broken by suppliers and buyers.
The experts' report, which urges more systematic monitoring of Somali arms shipments, disclosed that al-Qaida fighters trained and armed in the Horn of Africa state organized a suicide attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya a year ago.
At least four al-Qaida suspects remain in Somalia, where additional weapons may have been imported for the purpose of carrying out further attacks in east Africa, the report said.
The witnesses said there was no suggestion of an al-Qaida link to the shipment and added it was destined for a businessman.
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