AU delegation goes to Somalia for talks

[DONKEYMAN]

MOGADISHU, Somalia — An African Union delegation was in Somalia's capital Sunday to discuss the deployment of peacekeepers here, as the government struggled to disarm Mogadishu residents reluctant to give up their guns after years of fending for themselves amid chaos.

The United States, United Nations and the AU all want to deploy peacekeepers to stop Somalia from descending again to anarchy, but so far no African governments have responded to the call for an 8,000-strong peacekeeping force.

"A team has gone to take a look and to get information that will help us devise a plan for peacekeepers," Mohamed Foum, the AU's special representative for Somalia, said Sunday. He said nine delegates arrived Saturday to meet with government officials.

President Abdullahi Yusuf needs to establish enough calm to allow international peacekeepers to deploy in Somalia to protect his government until it can establish an effective police force and army. Last month, the government, with the critical help of Ethiopia's military, drove out an Islamic militia that controlled much of southern Somalia since summer.

Somali and Ethiopian soldiers on Sunday expanded their house-to-house searches for weapons in Mogadishu, whose residents remain heavily armed after more than a decade of anarchy.

"The government's plan of disarmament is a way to stabilize the country," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told The Associated Press.

But many in the capital say they would rather protect themselves for now than trust government forces who controlled just one town before Ethiopia stepped in.

Hassan Mohamoud said troops took his Kalashnikov assault rifle.

"I bought the gun about 10 years ago in order to safeguard myself and my family," he said. "But now I worry about whether the government will take responsibility for our safety."

In a potential sign of renewed lawlessness, fighting between clan militias over pasture and water for livestock has killed at least 20 people since Thursday in rural central Somalia, according to clan elders and witnesses.

In southern Somalia, Ethiopian jets reportedly bombed at least one village, killing three people, a traditional elder reported. Dinari had no details Sunday.

Dinari said that the government on Friday captured fighters from Chechnya, Eritrea, Sweden, and Britain who were loyal to the Islamists.

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[DONKEYMAN]

By Guled Mohamed

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - African Union officials arrived in Somalia to finalise plans for a peacekeeping force as government troops searched for weapons in the latest push to bring back order after weeks of war, an official said on Sunday.

Somalia's interim government wants African peacekeepers to be deployed after its troops, backed by heavily armed Ethiopian forces, ousted Islamists in a lightning December offensive.

"They came to meet with government officials in order to discuss how the African Union troops could be deployed," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari, told a news conference.

"They will visit several places in the country ... and they'll meet with senior government security officials. We hope the African troops will be deployed as soon as possible."

The government is seeking to install itself in Mogadishu -- one of the world's most dangerous cities -- and faces a huge challenge to bring peace and security to a nation, without effective central rule since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

It is seeking to disarm residents of a city awash with guns and Dinari said government forces had searched houses in the northern Arafat area and seized AK-47s, grenades and explosives. He said seven gangsters in another area were arrested.

"The operations were aimed at improving security in the capital city," Dinari said at Villa Somalia, the presidential compound of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre before his 1991 ouster.

Resident Mohammed Abdullahi said he saw dozens of government and Ethiopian troops in the area, and that some Somali soldiers had searched a hospital.

"I saw over 50 government troops walking towards Arafat hospital. After a few minutes they emerged carrying guns," he said. Others said the arms were later returned to the clinic.

The searches came a day after Somalia's parliament declared a three-month state of emergency. The law prohibits unauthorised protests and bans possession of weapons by individuals.

RE-CREATE FIEFDOMS

Residents fear Mogadishu could slide back into the kind of anarchy that gripped the city since 1991 and await to see whether the government can impose the relative stability they had experienced under the Islamists' strict six-month rule.

Warlords agreed on Friday to merge their forces into a new national army to tame the chaotic nation but deadly fighting outside where they met showed how hard that task will be.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council agreed this week to increase the number of troops from a proposed 8,000-strong deployment and called on the international community to fund the peace mission.

Uganda is ready to provide the first battalion, but awaits its parliament's approval. Kenya, chair of regional body IGAD, has sent top officials to several African nations to seek support for the force.

Ethiopia wants to withdraw its soldiers in the coming weeks. But diplomats fear that would leave the government vulnerable to remnants of the Islamists vowing guerrilla war. Somalia's stability is also under threat from warlords seeking to re-create their fiefdoms and competing clans.

"Now that the AU team has come, this clearly shows that the Ethiopian troops will leave the country in two to three weeks or after a month," Dinari said.

Washington launched an air strike on southern Somalia on Monday, which officials said was aimed at al Qaeda suspects accused of bombing two U.S. embassies and an Israeli-owned hotel in east Africa.

The strike was the United States' first overt military involvement in Somalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission ended in 1994.

It killed up to 10 al Qaeda allies, but missed its main target of three top suspects, the U.S. government said. Washington denies carrying out any further strikes.

"We requested the Americans to survey our air and sea," Dinari said, adding there were no U.S. forces on the ground in Somalia. "The American government has a right to look for terrorists who bombed its embassies."