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by Vision reporter and Agencies
05 January 2007
UGANDA is ready to send peacekeepers to Somalia as soon as Parliament approves the plan, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told the press in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa yesterday.
“The troops are ready but I have to consult the speaker of parliament. As soon as parliament approves, they will be sent to Somalia,” he said at a joint news conference with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Museveni, accompanied by his wife, Janet, and foreign affairs minister, Sam Kutesa, arrived in Ethiopia yesterday for a two-day visit to discuss, among others, the crisis in Somalia.
The President also met with US assistant secretary of state, Jendayi Frazer. The US yesterday promised ‘robust’ assistance for Somalia’s beleaguered interim government.
Uganda has been asked to play a key-role in a peace keeping force under the East African regional body, IGAD. A resolution passed by the UN Security Council last month endorsed the force and partially lifted the UN arms embargo.
Somali government troops, heavily backed by Ethiopian soldiers, tanks and fighter planes, in the past two weeks routed the Union of Islamic Courts, who had taken control of most of the country.
Ugandan troops would need to protect the interim government, which is trying to assert its authority over the capital Mogadishu for the first time since it was elected over two years ago.
But the challenge proves to be a daunting one as Somali gunmen attacked an oil tanker truck near Mogadishu yesterday, wounding three people and raising fears of a return to the clan violence that had largely stopped during six months of Islamist rule.
Within hours of their departure, militiamen loyal to various warlords reappeared at checkpoints in the city where they used to rob, rape and murder civilians.
“The militias fired three RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). One of them hit us,” the truck driver, who gave his name as Tusbah, told Reuters at the scene, where the charred wreckage of his vehicle lay strewn across a sandy road.
“They were bandits who wanted money.”
The rapid return of warlords showed how easily Mogadishu could slide back into the anarchy it has suffered since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
The attack came on the last day of a three-day government ultimatum for Mogadishu residents and militias to hand in their guns.
But few have been turned in, as locals in one of the world’s most dangerous cities wait to see if the government can restore the relative stability experienced under the Islamists.
“I have an AK-47 and a pistol in my house. I will not surrender them because I don’t see any trustworthy person to give them to,” said one resident, who declined to be named.
“People have started burying their weapons. Others have transported their
heavy weapons outside Mogadishu.”
Interior Minister Hussein Mohamed Farah Aideed said disarmament would take
time.
“The three days should not be taken literally. It can even take years,” he told reporters. “Disarming Somalis is not easy. The government will have a tough time collecting the arms and specifically the small arms.”
Meanwhile, the government troops, backed by Ethiopian armour and aircraft, continued to hunt Islamist fighters who fled their last stronghold in the southern port of Kismayu.
“Our troops went towards the Kenyan border to get those terrorists,” said
Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail, a senior government security official in Kismayu.
The US has deployed warships off the Somali coast to hunt fleeing Islamists.
Nairobi has declared the frontier closed, leaving refugees from the fighting unable to seek refuge in Kenya’s northeastern Dadaab camps, home to tens of thousands of Somalis. The move prompted criticism from the UN refugees agency.
But Kenyan foreign minister Raphael Tuju denied that genuine refugees had been turned away, and said suspected fighters holding British, Canadian, Eritrean and Danish passports had been intercepted.
“It is apparent that some of these asylum seekers are combatants on the run. Kenya will not allow combatants and their families to use this country as a base,” he said.
Source: New Vision Online