U.N. partially lifts arms embargo on Somalia for a year

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

U.N. partially lifts arms embargo on Somalia for a year

By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS | Wed Mar 6, 2013 12:30pm EST

(Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council agreed on Wednesday to partially lift a decades-old arms embargo on Somalia for one year, allowing the government in Mogadishu to buy light weapons to strengthen its security forces to fight al Qaeda-linked Islamists.

The 15-member council unanimously adopted a British-drafted resolution that also renewed a 17,600-strong African Union peacekeeping force for a year and reconfigured the U.N. mission in the Horn of Africa country.

Somalia's government had asked for the arms embargo to be removed and the United States supported that, but other Security Council members were wary about completely lifting the embargo on a country that is already awash with weapons, diplomats said.

"What we have tried to do is draw a balance between those who wanted an unrestricted lifting of the arms embargo and those who felt it was premature to lift the arms embargo," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters after the vote. "It is a good and strong compromise."

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/06/us-somalia-arms-un-idUSBRE92514A20130306

[dipsydoodle]

1. Seems a dumb idea to me

With no embargo in place there's nothing to prevent others from supplying the jihadists equally so.