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UN Security Council renews group monitoring arms embargo against Somalia

UN Security Council renews group monitoring arms embargo against Somalia

UN Security Council in session
Condemning continuing violations of the 12-year-old arms embargo against Somalia, the Security Council today called for a six-month extension of the latest mandate of an expert group monitoring the sanctions.

The action came in a unanimously adopted resolution which called on Secretary-General Kofi Annan to re-establish the group within a month to identify and report on violators and recommend ways of strengthening compliance with the measures.

Noting the 11 August report on the situation that the experts recently submitted, the Council said their recommendations would be given "due consideration" so that steps cam be taken to improve compliance with the embargo.

The resolution called on the experts to "continue refining and updating information on the draft list of those who continue to violate the arms embargo inside and outside Somalia, and their active supporters, for possible future measures by the Council and to present such information to the Committee as and when the Committee deems appropriate."

The August report recommends postponing the deadline for submitting names of alleged violators to be considered for a blacklist while they work out the duration of the violations by both previously named warlords and faction leaders and the new violators, who are businesspeople. The report carries some names from all three groups.

Also to be decided is whether accountability should date back to 2002, when the first Monitoring Group was formed, or to 1992, when the embargo was first imposed.

Difficulties could arise from imposing travel bans, or freezing the assets of violators, since most have family members outside Somalia and their finances were yet to be definitively determined, the report says, adding that some of the people who could be on the list may carry multiple passports, or have several nationalities, in addition to the fact that they have hardly ever been in Somalia.

The report recommends that the Council draw up a highly confidential draft "watch list" of Somalis who possibly contravened the embargo, including those whose names have consistently appeared in previous reports. Subsequently, a draft list of non-Somalis who have had a part in the illicit arms trade should be compiled.

Those who continued to transgress should have sanctions imposed on them, while other names should be dropped from the list, it says.

The frontline and neighbouring states - Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen - should implement anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist measures to strengthen the capacity of their financial institutions to trace client funds that might be linked to trafficking and smuggling, according to the report.

Dhow traffic in the region should be regulated, while the International Maritime Organization (IMO), in consultation with neighbouring countries and related organizations, should develop a practical monitoring programme for Somalia's 3,200-kilometre coastline, the second longest in Africa.

Though arms transfers by air had dropped in number, Somalia's neighbours should put all their airstrips under the control of their national airport regulators and should more closely monitor their own borders and their vehicular traffic, the report says.