The African Union has agreed in principle to deploy a peace support mission in the troubled Horn of Africa state of Somalia, the AU said in a statement yesterday.
The mission, which will be the first multinational force in Somalia since the end of a failed UN-mandated intervention in 1995, is expected to help install the country's transitional government, so far based in neighboring Kenya for security reasons.
The African Union's Peace and Security Council (PSC) "accepts in principle the deployment of an AU Peace Support Mission in Somalia," said the statement, released after the body met on Wednesday in Addis Ababa, where the pan-African body has its headquarters.
The PSC also approved "the establishment of an AU Advance Mission to be based in Nairobi that will ensure liaison" between the recently-formed Somali government and other partners to "undertake preparatory steps for the deployment of an AU Peace Support Mission as soon as possible," the statement said.
Somalia has been effectively without a central government since dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991. In October, however, a parliament and presidency were set up in neighboring Kenya, pending their hoped-for installation in the Somali capital Mogadishu once the security situation there improves. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected president on Oct. 10 by the new parliament.
Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Gedi is expected to name his government this week, also in Nairobi, after the country's parliament sacked the first one that was formed in December.
In its statement, the AU urged the Somali government "to effect appropriate arrangements and all such necessary legislative enactments, including security arrangement, in order to facilitate the deployment of the African Union Support Mission for Somalia."
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
RSS