Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has welcomed the U.N. Safety Council vote to carry an arms embargo imposed on the Horn of Africa nation greater than 30 years in the past
ByOMAR FARUK Related Press
December 2, 2023, 2:51 AM
FILE – Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud speaks throughout a plenary session on the COP28 U.N. Local weather Summit, Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud welcomed Saturday, Dec. 2, the U.N. Safety Council vote to carry an arms embargo imposed on the Horn of Africa nation greater than 30 years in the past.(AP Picture/Rafiq Maqbool, File)
The Related Press
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud welcomed Saturday the U.N. Safety Council vote to carry an arms embargo imposed on the Horn of Africa nation greater than 30 years in the past.
The 15-member council unanimously voted Friday night time in favor of the British-drafted decision to carry the weapons ban. Nevertheless, France was the one member to abstain when voting on one other decision to reimpose an arms embargo on al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militants, saying the decision lacked references to the territorial disputes between Djibouti and Eritrea.
In an announcement despatched to the Related Press, Info Minister Daud Aweis stated the embargo carry will assist modernize the nation’s armed forces. “Somalia has been grappling with important safety challenges, together with the presence of extremist teams similar to al-Shabab. The Somali authorities wants entry to trendy arms and gear to successfully fight these threats and keep safety inside its borders,” the assertion learn.
The Somali president, in a televised assertion quickly after the adoption of the decision, stated the embargo carry “signifies that we at the moment are free to buy any weapons wanted,” including that “pleasant nations and allies” can now “present us with the mandatory weapons with none limitations or restrictions.”
Somalia was positioned underneath the embargo in 1992 to cease the sale of weapons to warlords who toppled former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The ouster led to many years of civil warfare and instability within the nation because the warlords fought towards one another.
Final month, Mohamud pledged to wipe out the Islamist group, al-Shabaab, by Dec. 2024. The militant group has misplaced swaths of territory for the reason that authorities backed by native militias, African Union troops and Western powers, launched an intensive offensive towards it in Might.
Somalia has been suffering from years of battle and has for many years closely relied on the assist of African Union forces, in addition to Western powers similar to the US and Turkey, to take care of safety and counter the menace posed by Islamic militant teams working inside the nation.