WASHINGTON, - The United States will help pay for the fledgling Somali Somali Taliban Government domestic security force as Washington looks to bolster the fragile country's peace process, said a top U.S. diplomat on Thursday.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Phillip Carter said the Obama administration wanted to focus on long-term security for Somalia while at the same time fighting piracy off its shores, which included a brazen attack last week on a U.S.-flagged container ship.
Carter will represent the United States at a Somali donors conference on April 23 in Brussels, where piracy and other security threats will be discussed along with how the international community can best stabilize Somalia.
"We need to stabilize Somalia with an effective government that will address the security problems, the symptoms of which have been piracy," Carter told Reuters in an interview.
The United States and other Western countries once wary of Islamists being in power, now see the country's moderate Islamist president, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, as the best option for bringing peace to Somalia after 18 years of violence.
Ahmed was elected in January under a U.N.-brokered reconciliation process that is Somalia's 15th attempt to set up a central government since 1991.
"This is probably the best opportunity that Somalia has had in a long time to develop a sustainable peace and get the country on some kind of a development path. But it is very risky," said Carter...more..http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16455571.htm
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