Eritrea has not yet decided whether to send peace troops to Somalia

ASMARA, Feb 11 (AFP) — Eritrea has still not decided whether to send troops to Somalia for a peace support mission organised by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Eritrean officials said on Friday.

“We are still considering it, no final decision has been made yet, hopefully there will be one within two weeks,” said the Director of the Africa and Asia Department at the Foreign Ministry, Andeab Gebremeskel, on the phone in Asmara.

Eritrea is one of the seven countries composing IGAD, together with Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda.

“There was a consensus recently among IGAD to say that if troops were to be sent to Somalia, they should not be from neighbouring countries because of conflicts of interest. That was also our position. Today (Friday) I don’t know if Eritrea will send troops,” confirmed Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki’s Chief of Staff, Yemane Gebremeskel, also on the phone in Asmara.

Somalia’s transitional government, based in Kenya, has approved the peace support mission, which is to assist it gain a foothold in Mogadishu. But several warlords who control Somalia have rejected the plan, followed on Thursday by the main muslim leader in the country.

A visit by a Somalian parliament delegation led by its speaker and bound to prepare the moving of the institutions from Kenya to Somalia was marred on Wednesday in Mogadishu by the murder of a British journalist from the BBC. She was shot by unidentified gunmen, and died while undergoing surgery in a local hospital.

Somalia plunged into chaos after the fall of President Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Since last October, Somalia has adopted political institutions — president, government, parliament –, but the latter remain in Nairobi for security reasons.