(United Nations) The UN Security Council on Tuesday unanimously adopted a resolution extending for only three months, until March 31, the AMISOM peace force of the African Union in Somalia, the West expressing their irritation at the lack of progress to reconfigure this mission.
AMISOM has some 20,000 troops in Somalia, deployed to support the fragile Somali authorities in the fight against the insurgency led by jihadists of the Al-Shabaab group.
Discussions have long been underway on a reconfiguration of this AU operation, authorized by the Security Council and financed in particular by the United Nations and the European Union.
It should have intervened in 2021. But Somalia and the AU differ on what should be this reconfiguration, which also opposes Africans to Westerners, according to diplomats who did not specify the points of divergence.
“The United States urges all parties to reach an agreement by the end of February 2022 to allow the adoption of a new mandate by March 31, 2022,” said Richard Mills, Ambassador of the United States after the vote. United Deputy UN.
“We urge the Somali government, the African Union and their international friends to take advantage” of this new deadline for discussions “to reach an agreement […] on the strategic objectives, duration, size, composition and funding of a reconfigured mission capable of confronting the threat of Al-Shabaab and of strengthening the capacity of the Somali security forces to assume their security responsibilities “, he said.
“France calls on the parties to find an agreement as soon as possible and, in any event, before three months”, added the French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Rivière, recalling that a joint UN report and the AU was expected in vain since 1er September.
“There can be no further postponement. The Security Council will have to take a decision in March 2022 to establish a reconfigured African Union mission. In the event that he is prevented from doing so, this would call into question the funding of the European Union to AMISOM ”, threatened the French diplomat.
For his British counterpart Barbara Woodward, whose country drafted the resolution adopted on Tuesday, all parties must use the three-month period granted “to engage in good faith in the search for a consensus”.