US seeks UN backing for Somalia peacekeeping force

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 (Reuters) The United States will endorse African peacekeepers to help prop up Somalia's shaky interim government in a draft resolution to be unveiled today, US Ambassador John Bolton said.

Washington's draft would also ease a widely ignored 14-year-old UN arms embargo on Somalia to enable the peacekeepers to legally bring in arms and train and equip local security forces, he said.

With widespread instability and the interim government under pressure from Islamists, ''what we want to do is endorse the insertion of this regional peacekeeping force which many of the African states have called for, in order to provide some measure of stability there, to permit a political solution,'' Bolton told reporters.

The Islamists have been steadily expanding their reach and influence in Somalia after seizing the capital of Mogadishu in June. The United States says they are harboring al Qaeda operatives who pose a threat in the region and elsewhere.

Washington earlier backed a coalition of warlords in its effort to counter the Islamists' growing influence in the Horn of Africa nation, which has been in chaos, without a central government, since 1991.

But the Islamists defeated the coalition in June as they seized control of the capital, Mogadishu.

More recently, Ethiopian troops have poured over the border into Somalia to support the interim government holed up in the small provincial town of Baidoa.

The African Union and regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which brokered the transitional government's installation in 2004, have long been pushing for regional peacekeepers to support it.

'WHAT IS THE ANSWER?' But word of the US initiative set off alarms this week when the Brussels-based International Crisis Group and European experts warned the draft could backfire by undermining the interim government, strengthening the Islamists and leading to wider war.

Because the Islamists are backed by Eritrean troops, the group said it feared the intervention in Somalia could deteriorate into a proxy war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, whose relations remain extremely tense years after a bloody border war between them.

The group said the Security Council should not take sides in Somalia or let neighboring countries like Ethiopia and Eritrea participate in the force.

It urged the council to instead tighten the UN arms embargo and encourage government and Islamist leaders to hold talks aimed at a political settlement of their rivalry.

But Bolton said the resolution left the composition of the force to IGAD and the AU.

''People criticize us when we take action on the ground that our taking action makes the situation worse. So what is the answer -- not to take action?'' Bolton asked.

Jendayi Frazier, the US assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, said in Washington this week that IGAD had itself ruled out putting troops from neighboring countries in the intervention force.

''The country that has said that it would deploy forces at this time is Uganda, and we would look for other countries that would be willing to do so from throughout Africa, but we are not expecting that any of the immediate neighbors would be deploying,'' Frazier told reporters on Wednesday.

REUTERS SBA BST0037