Security Council has no questions on Somalia raid

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 11 (Reuters) The 15-nation Security Council raised no questions or objections after a US diplomat briefed the U.N. body on an air strike by Washington against an al Qaeda target in Somalia.

''There was no discussion of this particular issue and I have no comment on that,'' Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the council president for January, told reporters after a closed-door meeting on Somalia.

''Nobody. No reference, except the United States itself,'' said Chinese Deputy UN Ambassador Liu Zhenmin.

US envoy Jackie Sanders said she confirmed during the session that the strike on Monday had targeted ''a high-level al Qaeda leader.'' ''Al Qaeda as you know blew up two of our embassies in 1998.

We have a long memory when it comes to terrorists killing innocent Americans and, in this case, Africans. And in this case we were going after those folks who were involved,'' Sanders told reporters. The 1998 embassy bombings occurred in Kenya and Tanzania.

A US official denied reports yesterday that Washington had carried out further strikes in Somalia.

Somali officials have said many died in Monday's attack -- the first overt US military action in Somalia since a disastrous humanitarian mission ended in 1994.

Sanders said she had no information on casualties, whether targeted or accidental.

''Addressing the al Qaeda situation and terrorists all over the world is something that we plan to do, the president (George W Bush) has said we are going to do and we will continue to do,'' she said.

New UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Somalia but noted its Transitional Federal Government had welcomed US involvement, his chief spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said yesterday.

Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari told the council the United Nations was sending a mission to southern Somalia, near the border with Kenya, to assess the need for humanitarian aid in the area.

Council members supported that plan as well as the rapid deployment in Somalia of an African peacekeeping mission, Churkin said.

Reuters DKS VP0715