UN probes Somali arms embargo
2003-11-12 12:47
New York - A United Nations Security Council mission has headed to East Africa to look at violations of the arms embargo on Somalia, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
Stefan Tafrov, the UN ambassador from council member Bulgaria, is heading the 10-day mission, which left late last week to meet in Cairo with Arab League secretary general Amr Mussa.
It will also visit Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen, Eritrea, Kenya and Somalia's former colonial power, Italy.
The visit comes after a new UN report last week found that Somalia was used as a springboard by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which used a cell based there to stage a deadly bombing in Kenya one year ago.
Somalia denies it
But the mission will not visit Somalia, which was deemed a security risk. The Somali government has denied that it is a base for al-Qaeda.
US forces pulled out of the country in 1994 after an effort to deliver humanitarian aid turned into a failed campaign against a leading warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid.
That campaign was highlighted by a deadly battle in the capital, Mogadishu, in October 1993 that left 18 US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis dead.
The UN report released last week concluded that the bombing of the Paradise Hotel in Kenya, frequented by Israeli tourists, and an attempted attack on a flight to Israel, were carried out by militants who acquired missiles from Yemen that were sent through Somalia.
The report said that repeated violations of the arms embargo in Somalia allowed "transnational terrorists" to get air-defence systems, anti-tank weapons and explosives from the country.
"It remains relatively easy to obtain surface-to-air missiles and import them to Somalia," the report said. "Somalia's lawless, largely ungoverned territory has enhanced the vulnerability of the entire region."
Somalia has lacked an effective central government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohammed Siad Bare. Well-armed factions have been in almost constant low-level war since then.