By Daniel Wallis
NAIROBI, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The international community must focus on ending impunity in Somalia, where warlords have committed gross human rights abuses against civilians for many years, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.
The U.N. Security Council renewed the authority this week for a small African Union peace force for the country and agreed to debate next month whether U.N. troops should be sent there.
But Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, U.N. special representative for Somalia, said Wednesday's resolution was missing a key element.
"I am under pressure from Somalis in the Diaspora and within the country, the victims, to explain why no mention is made of ending impunity," Ould-Abdallah told Reuters in an interview.
"They say that unless it is addressed, there's no possibility of a return to peace, or a return to a normal economy or the normal delivery of humanitarian assistance."
Lawless Somalia has been wracked by conflict between a fledgling interim government, its Ethiopian allies and heavily armed remnants of a hardline Islamist group that they chased out of the capital Mogadishu at the start of 2007.
This week's resolution extended the U.N. endorsement of the AU mission for six months and included several positive statements that amounted to progress, Ould-Abdallah said.
The protection of civilians and humanitarian relief efforts were placed front and centre, while member states were urged to help guard merchant shipping from pirates off the Somali coast, especially vessels carrying vital U.N. food aid.
But it made no mention of targeting warlords and other Somalis -- some serving in the government and others allied to the rebels -- who have made life a misery for most Somalis since the late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
"NO POLITICAL WILL"
"We mention the need to protect, but we do not say from whom, or for how long this has taken place," Ould-Abdallah said.
"I think one of the reasons is that people are not paying attention to Somalia, there is no political will ... the focus is so much on reconciliation, reconciliation. Not on this."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will report to the Security Council on March 10 on the findings of two technical teams he sent to Somalia and neighbouring states. Council members will then debate whether to act on repeated appeals for U.N. peacekeepers by the interim government and the AU.
Both Ban and the 15-nation council have been wary of sending U.N. troops to the Horn of Africa state, where insurgents recently stepped up a campaign of assassinations, mortar and grenade attacks and Iraq-style roadside bombings.
The calls for outside intervention have revived bitter memories of the killing of U.S. soldiers during the "Black Hawk Down" battle of 1993, which marked the beginning of the end of a joint U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping mission.
The current AU force -- which consists of only about 1,600 Ugandan troops and an advance party of 192 soldiers from Burundi -- gets its mandate from the AU. But it also needs the world body's backing, partly to exempt it from a U.N. arms embargo.
The AU initially planned for the force, known as AMISOM, to be 8,000-strong. But it has struggled to get countries to contribute troops as the Somali body count has risen.
Local human rights workers say fighting killed 6,500 civilians in Mogadishu last year, and nearly 300 more during the last month. The U.N. refugee agency says the conflict is the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis -- even worse than that in Sudan's Darfur.
Ould-Abdallah said many Somalis pointed to international prosecutors working on criminal cases in other African nations like Liberia and Uganda, and could not understand why no one was being blamed for their country's woes.
"They repeatedly say that the Security Council is closing its eyes on this," he said. "They consider it discrimination." (Editing by Tim Pearce).
Source: Reuters 2008.
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