African peace mission won't fail in Somalia -Uganda
Source: Reuters
By Tim Cocks KAMPALA, Jan 5 (Reuters) - An African Union peacekeeping force for Somalia will succeed because Africans understand the conflict better than American forces did in a disastrous 1993 mission, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Friday. Uganda is the first country in line to contribute to a peacekeeping force requested by Somalia's interim government after a two-week war in which it routed Islamist fighters with the help of Ethiopian forces. The Islamists, who controlled much of southern Somalia since June, have vowed to fight on and al Qaeda's deputy leader on Friday urged the movement to launch an Iraq-style insurgency against Ethiopian forces. Museveni said he was "optimistic" about peacekeeping in Somalia, despite the failure of a U.S.-led U.N. mission in the early 1990s that ended when militiamen killed 18 U.S. soldiers. Television images of two of the bodies being dragged through the streets after fighting in which U.S. troops killed more than 300 Somalis prompted a hasty withdrawal. "Our peacekeeping is different from these Western countries," he told diplomats and journalists at the official launch of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2007, which Uganda will host in November. "The Western countries do not listen carefully. They are full of themselves, they think they know everything. That's why they make mistakes," he said, facing British High Commissioner Francois Gordon and other British diplomats. Museveni met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on Thursday, and pledged to send peacekeepers to Somalia as soon as Uganda's parliament approves the plan. Washington has agreed to donate $16 million for the proposed African force, which was endorsed by the United Nations before the war. Western and African diplomats on Friday called for its urgent deployment. The army says a battalion of 700-800 Ugandan troops have already been trained and equipped for the job. Ugandan government officials have repeatedly expressed concerns about sending soldiers to Somalia, saying the force needed a clear mission and exit strategy. But Museveni said he was confident. "African issues are not that difficult," he said. "They only become difficult when handled by people who do not know how to handle them." He defended the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. The arrival of the government-Ethiopian force into Mogadishu last week after the Islamists fled was met with a mixture of jubilation, fear and protests. "We have some terrorists who may be hiding somewhere in Somalia even after the Ethiopian intervention, but (they) will be handled. The situation would have been worse if those terrorists had been in control of the state," he said.
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