|
UNITED NATIONS, January 30, 2010 — The UN Security Council voted
unanimously Thursday to authorize the African Union peacekeeping force
in Somalia to stay for another year and urged it to boost its strength
to 8,000 troops.
Deployed in March 2007, the force known as AMISOM fields 5,300 Ugandan
and Burundian soldiers and is currently charged with protecting
strategic sites in the seaside capital such as the presidency, the port
and the airport.
The 15-member council empowered AMISOM to stay until January 31, 2011
and asked it "to increase its force strength with a view to achieving
(its) originally mandated strength of 8,000 troops, thereby enhancing
its ability to carry out its mandate in full."
The mandate expires Sunday.
The council resolution also directed the force to continue assisting
Somalia's transitional government in developing the Somali Police Force
and the National Security Force, and to help integrate Somali units
trained by other UN member states or organizations inside and outside
Somalia.
Earlier this month, the 53-member African Union renewed AMISOM's mandate
for six months.
Somalia's internationally-backed transitional government has been boxed
into a tiny perimeter in its capital Mogadishu by an insurgency launched
in May 2009 by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Shabaab group and its more
political Hezb al-Islam allies.
It has owed its survival largely to AMISOM.
The force's top civilian official reassured the wobbly government of its
total support in the fight against insurgent groups.
Insurgents accuse AMISOM of being an occupying force bent on introducing
Christianity to Muslim Somalia. The force has also been criticized for
killing scores of civilians during retaliatory shelling.
Somalia has had no effective government since President Mohamed Siyad
Barre was forced out of power in the early 1990s.
Source: AFP, January 29, 2010
|
|
