December 23, 2000
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he is ready to propose a U.N. mission to help restore peace in Somalia, which is starting to emerge from nearly 10 years of anarchy and lawlessness.
``A key function of such a mission, which I expect to be based inside Somalia, would be to assist in the completion of the peace process,'' Annan said Friday in a report to the Security Council. But, he said, ``given the current security situation, locating United Nations staff in the capital would be possible only after a single - and effective - authority for security in the city has been established.''
Somalia has been divided into fiefdoms defended by clan-based militias since 1991, when opposition leaders joined forces to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. In May, a reconciliation conference in neighboring Djibouti elected a new president and a 245-person assembly, giving the nation of 7 million people its first central government in nearly a decade.
However, faction leaders, who still control most of the country, oppose the new government led by President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan.
Annan called the conference ``a major step ... in the search for peace'' and welcomed Hassan's commitment to achieving progress by peaceful means. He urged Hassan's government to find ways to incorporate opponents of the Djibouti conference - some of them heavily armed - into the peace process.
The airport and seaport in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, were closed in 1995 because faction leaders could not agree on who would take charge.
``It would be a good sign if full operations for all traffic were restored in both the seaport and airport and if free and safe access to all districts of the city were guaranteed,'' Annan said.
He also urged Hassan to work out relations with two breakaway regions, Somaliland and Puntland. The two regions enjoy relative peace and stability, and their leaders say they're waiting for peace to be restored elsewhere before meeting with Hassan.
``I hope that Somalis on all sides will do everything possible to solve the remaining issues in a peaceful and constructive way and in the interest of the common good,'' Annan said.
He noted that no country has ever been without central authority for so long. ``To recover from a decade of statelessness and conflict will involve not only the remaking of political society but also the total reconstruction of the country's basic infrastructure,'' he said.
