AU Visits Somalia for Peacekeeping Talks

Former police officers loyal to Somalia's transitional government patrol a street of Mogadishu, Saturday, Jan. 13, 2007. Somali lawmakers voted Saturday to authorize the government to declare martial law, the deputy parliament speaker said, as the country's internationally recognized leaders struggle to assert their authority after battling an Islamic movement that had controlled much of southern Somalia. (AP Photo/Mohamed Sheikh Nor) (Mohamed Sheikh Nor - AP)

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- An African Union delegation was in Somalia's capital Sunday to discuss the deployment of international peacekeepers as government troops expanded a house-to-house search for weapons in one of the world's most dangerous and heavily armed cities.

Mohamed Foum, the AU's special representative for Somalia, said nine delegates arrived in Mogadishu on Saturday for meetings with leaders of the U.N.-supported transitional government in this chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

"A team has gone to take a look and to get information that will help us devise a plan for peacekeepers," Foum said.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf needs to establish enough calm so foreign peacekeepers can deploy to protect his government until it can form an effective police force and army.

Troops loyal to the interim government, with critical help from the military of neighboring Ethiopia, last month routed an Islamic militia that had controlled much of southern Somalia since summer.

But insecurity remains a problem in a country whose 7 million people haven't had an effective government since clan warlords toppled a longtime military dictatorship in 1991 and then turned on each other.

Fighting between clan militias over pasture and water for livestock in an area 90 miles northwest of Mogadishu killed at least 20 people since Thursday in rural central Somalia, clan elders and witnesses reported.

On Sunday, gunmen raided a police station in northeast Mogadishu, killing a soldier and wounding a civilian, said Adbi Haji Barale, the district police commissioner. It was not clear whether the soldier was Somali or Ethiopian.

The United States and European Union have offered financial help for an African peacekeeping force intended to keep Somalia from sliding back into clan fighting and anarchy. So far, no African government has responded to the push to form an 8,000-man mission, although Uganda has indicated it is willing to send 1,500 soldiers as part of a wider mission.

The only other nations possibly willing and able to provide troops are South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Benin and perhaps Senegal. But all already provide peacekeepers for operations around the world, and South Africa and Nigeria especially are spread thin.

And no country will send peacekeepers into Somalia if there is fighting.

A U.N. peacekeeping operation in Somalia in the early 1990s saw clashes between foreign troops and warlords' fighters, including the downing of two U.S. Army helicopters and killing of 18 American soldiers in a 1993 battle. That clash led the U.S. to withdraw from Somalia in 1994, and other U.N. peacekeepers were gone by the next year.