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| Africa Horn | |||||
| UK-Somali links raise concern as UN alleges corruption and arms deals | |||||
| 2014-11-19 | |||||
| With humanitarian agencies warning of another hunger crisis in Somalia, questions are being raised about Britain's relationship with the country's president in the wake of a report by UN investigators alleging corruption and links with Islamic militants. Caroline Lucas, the Green party's MP, plans to table questions in parliament this month seeking information on Britain's reaction to the corruption allegations and to a controversial oil deal. "The UN monitoring group has raised some serious concerns about corruption in Somalia and about activities that may be undermining the arms embargo, which the UK has formally supported. My parliamentary questions are an attempt to get the facts into the public domain," Lucas said. "The allegations relating to the negotiation of oil company deals with the Somali government and exploitation of loopholes in an arms embargo are deeply worrying." The UN monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea, which monitors compliance with UN sanctions, submitted its report to the UN security council in October. It said army weapons and ammunition were still being diverted to open markets despite government pledges to act against this. The report's authors accused Musa Haji Mohamed Ganjab, a man they said was an adviser to the president, of being involved in arms deals with the Islamist insurgency group al-Shabaab. Reuters reported that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had denied that Ganjab had ever been an adviser, and said nobody close to him had been involved in diverting government weapons. Ganjab, a Somali-Canadian businessman, also denied the allegations.
Foreign donors, led by Britain, have pledged large amounts of money to rebuild Somalia. The security council agreed to ease a decades-old arms embargo in March 2013, despite some members' concerns.
"The partial suspension is designed to allow the government to obtain the equipment needed to develop the national security forces, which are critical for Somalia's long-term security." Potentially more damaging to the British government are allegations in the UN report that a London-based oil company, Soma Oil & Gas, signed a deal with the Somali government in August 2013 to conduct seismic surveys. "The contract has never been made public, nor was it approved by the federal parliament of Somalia although it was ratified by the council of ministers," the monitoring group said.
Soma Oil has told Reuters "the broad terms" of the deal were made public. The company said it had invested about $37m in a programme to gather and digitalise old seismic information and collect new offshore data. Lucas said the monitoring group had called for a freeze on all new oil and gas deals until appropriate constitutional, legislative, fiscal and regulatory provisions had been agreed by the federal government and its regional authorities. "We need to know whether that's a position that the UK government supports in practice, not just on paper," she said.
IThe FCO spokesman said: "The UK supports responsible investment in Somalia and, in line with Somalia's wishes, we are keen for the federal government to be able to use Somalia's natural resources to generate much-needed revenue so that it can deliver services for its people. "The UK is encouraging the Somali government and the emerging federal states to reach agreement on resource ownership and revenue-sharing – and to develop a legal framework that both supports that agreement and reflects best practice – before signing oil deals." | |||||
| Posted by:Steve White |