AU says troops in Somalia need help, wants U.N. force

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The African Union said on Wednesday it was incapable of stabilizing the situation in Somalia and urged the United Nations take over peacekeeping operations in the lawless Horn of Africa country.

"Despite all sacrifices of its leaders and elements, AMISOM is unable to fulfill its mandate because its strength is obviously grossly incommensurate to the scope of real challenges on the ground," AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Ramtane Lamamra told the U.N. Security Council.

"The mission faces severe lack of funding and logistic support," he said.

AMISOM, the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia, has authorized the deployment of 8,000 troops but has only 2,600 on the ground at present, he said.

The sole suppliers of AMISOM peacekeepers are Uganda and Burundi, though Nigeria and others have offered troops.

Lamamra said it was "crucial to beef up the mission to reach its authorized strength," adding that the AU had launched a drive to get more countries to contribute troops to AMISOM.

Lamamra and others urged the council to authorize the United Nations to take over from the AU the task of stabilizing Somalia.

"We are asking the Security Council to deploy a U.N. force, a force funded by the U.N., a force under a U.N. mandate," the Foreign Minister of Somalia's interim government, Ali Ahmed Jama, told the council during a meeting on Somalia.

U.N. special envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, called for a robust U.N. stabilization force, while cautioning that "troops will not be a panacea to bring total peace."

While the 15 Security Council members all agree the situation is dire, most have been reluctant to send U.N. peacekeepers to Somalia, where warlords, Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces are battling.

Recently militants have been targeting humanitarian aid workers in Somalia for assassination, council diplomats say.

Talk of U.N. intervention is still colored by memories of a battle in 1993 in which 18 U.S. troops and hundreds of Somali militiamen died. The incident inspired a Hollywood movie, "Black Hawk Down" and marked the beginning of the end for a U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force.

DETERIORATING SITUATION

In May, the council passed a resolution that asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to explore possible peacekeeping scenarios but said discussion of a U.N. peacekeeping mission would depend on political and security improvements.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he hoped the possible scenarios would be ready by mid-August, adding that Somalia's humanitarian and security situations were deteriorating.

Somalia's interim government and some members of the exiled opposition signed a deal in Djibouti last month calling for deployment of U.N. troops and a ceasefire after a month.

But on Tuesday hardline Islamist Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who had opposed the Djibouti talks, said he had taken over the exiled opposition in Eritrea, causing some Security Council diplomats to worry whether the Djibouti deal could unravel.

Jama said he was not worried about the Djibouti deal.

"In our view, the large majority of the opposition is in favor of this agreement and that's what encourages us that it will succeed," he said.

"Once the agreement comes into effect, we are hoping that violence would go down and a climate conducive to deployment (of U.N. peacekeepers) would be created," Jama said.

The U.N. World Food Program has warned that the continued violence threatens to wreck all efforts to resolve a humanitarian emergency that could soon rival the country's famine in the early 1990s. Hundreds of thousands died then.

Over 8,000 civilians have been killed and 1 million forced from their homes since the start of last year by fighting between the interim government and Islamist insurgents.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jackie Frank)