By Michelle Nichols, UNITED
NATIONS
The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Friday to remove the final restrictions on weapons deliveries to Somalia's government and its security forces, diplomats said, more than 30 years after an arms embargo was first imposed on the country.
The council put the embargo on
Somalia in 1992 to cut the flow of weapons to feuding warlords, who had ousted
dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and plunged the Horn of Africa country into civil
war.
The 15-member body is due to
adopt two British-drafted resolutions on Friday, diplomats said - one to remove
the full arms embargo on Somalia and another to reimpose an arms embargo on Al
Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab militants.
One of the draft resolutions
spells out that "for the avoidance of doubt, that there is no arms embargo
on the Government of the Federal Republic of Somalia."
It also expresses concern
about the number of safe ammunition storage facilities in Somalia, and
encourages the construction, refurbishment and use of safe ammunition depots
across Somalia. It urges other countries to help.
Al Shabaab has been waging a
brutal insurgency against the Somali government since 2006 to try to establish
its own rule based on a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
Somalia's government had long
asked for the arms embargo to be removed so it could beef up its forces to take
on the militants. The Security Council began to partially start lifting
measures Somalia's security forces in 2013.
President Hassan Sheikh
Mohamud said last week that Somalia has one year to expel al Shabaab, with the
deadline for remaining African Union peacekeepers to leave looming next
December.
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