Uganda, Sudan to send initial peace force to Somalia

Somali Refugees demonstrate in Nairobi, Friday, March 18, 2005. Somalia’s parliament stands by its decision to reject the use of troops from neighboring countries in a force planned to secure a transitional government as it returns home from exile, the speaker said Friday. Somali lawmakers-in-exile accepted troops from countries that do not share borders with Somalia in a hotly disputed session that ended with legislators fighting each other with clubs, chairs and walking sticks, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden told The Associated Press (AP).

NAIROBI, March 18 (AFP) — Uganda and Sudan will send the first batch of troops to Somalia as part of a regional force to help relocation of the country’s government, still holed up in Kenya, regional ministers said here Friday.

“The initial deployment of troops shall be undertaken by countries of IGAD which are ready to do so now, namely, Uganda and Sudan,” Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) ministerial chairman Sam Kutesa told reporters.

The IGAD ministers, however, failed to give specific date of deployment, the size of the force and the cost of the exercise.

Kutesa said that the remaining IGAD countries would only provide “logistics, equipment, emergency assistance and training of the Somali army and police” to the first phase of the deployment.

Last week, senior defence officials meeting in Uganda said IGAD planned to send a 10,000-strong force across Somalia except in the breakaway region of Somaliland.

In February, the African Union (AU) authorized IGAD to deploy an initial peacekeeping force to Somalia to help the country’s transitional government relocate there from exile in Kenya, before AU troops get on the ground.

But hardline Islamic clerics have vowed to oppose the whole deployment while a section of warlords have objected to the presence in the force of soldiers from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya which they say have ulterior motives in participating.

Somalia has been in chaos without any functioning central authority since the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 turned the nation into a patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by warlords.