Somali Warlords Reject Call To Lift ‎UN Arms Embargo

By Somalilandtimes network

MOGADISHU, Somalia,   February 28, 2006 --   Warlords controlling the Somali capital on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to refuse calls by President Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed to lift an arms embargo, warning that such a move would shatter any hopes of peace in the country.

Warlord Mohamed Afrah Qanyare said that lifting the 14-year-old embargo would spark new and more deadly fighting in Somalia, which has been torn by interclan violence since dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre was toppled in 1991.

"We, the ministers who are based in Mogadishu, are appealing to the UN Security Council not to lift the embargo because such a move would bring a new and more deadly round of violence," Qanyare said, referring to the position taken by the powerful warlords, who are also renegade federal ministers in the transitional government.

"If the embargo is lifted, the weapons will definitely spill into the hands of civilians and rival militia, then hundreds will start dying and thousands will be injured since more weapons will arrive in Somalia," he said in an interview.

On Sunday Yusuf asked the UN, during his speech to the maiden parliamentary session in Baidoa, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Mogadishu, to lift the embargo and enable his powerless government to exert control across the country.

The warlords skipped the session, the first inside Somalia because of the tensions there. They said that they were surprised by the call by Yusuf, who has used several international platforms, including the UN and the African Union in the past, to make the call.

"It is very surprising to everybody that leaders who are appealing for disarmament and demobilization of militiamen are the same people appealing for the embargo to lifted," Qanyare said hours after the warlords met with US officials in the provincial town of Jowhar to find ways of fighting terrorism in Somalia.

"Instead, the president should have used the platform to promote reconciliation among Somalis," said Qanyare, one of several warlords in bullet-scarred Mogadishu, where deadly weapons are still on sale in the streets.

The United States, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, donor nations and the International Crisis Group, a respected policy panel, have all warned that lifting the embargo, imposed in 1992, could spark a fresh round of bloodletting in Somalia.

Somalia has lacked an effective security force since the 1991 overthrow of Barre, whose regime was a by-word for terror.

Last year Yusuf assembled groups of militia in Puntland to form the nucleus of a new national army, but the move was scuppered by a lack of effective weapons, apparently preventing Yusuf's government from functioning.

In November the seven-nation East African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which mediated the Somali peace talks, said that the transitional government had the right to recruit and equip its own security forces despite the arms embargo and that it should not be prevented from asserting the country's legitimate right to self-defense.

Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi have established themselves in Jowhar, 90 kilometers to the north because of insecurity in Mogadishu, and as result of the stance taken by rivals led by influential parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, including powerful Mogadishu warlords, who insist that the administration be in the capital.

Source: Middle East Times

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