| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Africa Horn | |
| AU in Somalia to plan peace force | |
| 2007-01-15 | |
| MOGADISHU (Reuters) - African Union officials arrived in Somalia to finalize plans for a peacekeeping force as government troops searched for weapons in the latest push to bring back order after weeks of war, an official said on Sunday. Somalia's interim government wants African peacekeepers to be deployed after its troops, backed by heavily armed Ethiopian forces, ousted Islamists in a lightning December offensive. "They came to meet with government officials in order to discuss how the African Union troops could be deployed," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari, told a news conference. "They will visit several places in the country ... and they'll meet with senior government security officials. We hope the African troops will be deployed as soon as possible." The African Union's Peace and Security Council agreed this week to increase the number of troops from a proposed 8,000-strong deployment and called on the international community to fund the peace mission.
Ethiopia wants to withdraw its soldiers in the coming weeks. "Now that the AU team has come, this clearly shows that the Ethiopian troops will leave the country in two to three weeks or after a month," Dinari said. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |