The African Union has extended by the three months the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in the war-torn Somalia, and called on the United Nations to lift an arms embargo on Somalia.
"The decision has been taken to extend the mandate of AMISOM for three months," Edouard Aho-Glele, Benin's envoy to the bloc told reporters late Wednesday after a meeting of the body's Peace and Security Council (PSC).
Aho-Glele said the PSC also urged member states to contribute troops to the force, which currently comprises only 3,450 Ugandan and Burundian troops, less than half the planned 8,000 soldiers.
The council's chairman Ramtane Lamamra said the AU was trying to assemble troops to complete the understrength Somali mission.
"There is no security vacuum, but there is a need to boost the numbers on the ground," he said.
He added that it was "necessary to transform the AMISOM into a UN force."
"We are now reinforcing and upgrading the AMISOM, but we insist to the international community that the baton should be passed on."
In January, the UN Security Council voted to postpone until June a decision on whether to set up a UN peacekeeping force in Somalia to take over from struggling African-bloc force.
Aho-Glele said the AU had also "decided to ask the UN Security Council to lift an arms embargo (on Somalia) for the transitional government to equip, and ensure the security of the country."
The UN Security Council slapped an arms embargo on the country in 1992.
Since deploying in early 2007, the AU force has suffered numerous attacks by a hardline Islamist militia who claimed the killing of 11 Burundi troops last month in a suicide attack on their base in southern Mogadishu.
On Thursday, Islamist insurgents attacked the force's Burundi contingent in southern Mogadishu, sparking a firefight which killed one rebel, witnesses said.
Source: AFP
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