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| Africa Horn |
| Uganda short of money to boost Somalia force |
| 2008-03-08 |
| Uganda cannot fulfil its offer to completely take over the peacekeeping mission in Somalia because nobody has come up with the money, the defence minister said on Friday. Uganda was the first of two countries to deploy soldiers as part of an African Union mission to Somalia, torn by fighting between the interim government and Islamist insurgents. The African Union is supposed to pay for the force, but depends on funding from members and is short of cash. Uganda has said it could supply all 8,000 troops needed if the force is given a U.N. mandate, which would let Uganda tap a bigger pool of funding, but that has not yet happened. "We are ready to start deployments in Somalia but we have a funding problem," Ugandan Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga said in an interview with Reuters. "There is no money to transport and maintain peacekeeping troops in Somalia as promised." |
| Posted by:Fred |