SOMALIA: Arms embargo violations on the rise, UN team says

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 10 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - Violations of a UN arms embargo by the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), its opponents in the capital, Mogadishu, and certain parties in the region have recently taken a "sustained and dramatic upswing", a monitoring team said.

In its most recent report released on 4 October, the team said the increased arms inflow was a manifestation of "highly aggravated political tensions between the TFG and the opposition".

This, it added, had given rise to increased militarisation of both sides, resulting in a severely elevated threat of widespread violence in Somalia.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed a four-member panel of experts to investigate violations of the embargo against Somalia in September 2002. He re-established the four-member monitoring group in March 2005 following reports that various armed Somali factions were still receiving weapons from various sources.

"The Monitoring Group has identified certain key revenue generators in the area of marine fisheries and the export of huge commercial quantities of charcoal by cargo ships that provide the bulk of known earned revenue to certain powerful local administrations," it said.

The revenues obtained in this manner, it added, were used by those in charge to help maintain their militias and for purchasing arms.

The team recommended that the UN Security Council consider strengthening the existing arms embargo by adopting an "integrated arms embargo". This would reduce the financial capacity of individuals in charge of local administrations to buy arms in violation of the embargo.

The UN imposed an arms embargo on Somalia in 1992, in the midst of a civil war that followed the 1991 collapse of the government of President Muhammad Siyad Barre.

The President of the TFG, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, appealed in September for the lifting of the arms embargo on the grounds that it was hampering his government's efforts to maintain law and order in the war-scarred nation.

Yusuf suggested that sanctions targeted at individuals would do more to foster peace and stability in Somalia. He called on the UN to establish "punitive and targeted sanctions" against those attempting to sabotage the country's chances of lasting peace.

[ENDS]