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11/21/2004:

"Somali Leader, in Kenya Exile, Asks U.N. to Help Disarm Militias"

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 19 - The newly installed president of Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, used a rare appearance before the United Nations Security Council here on Friday to request an international peacekeeping force to help secure the country.

Reiterating a plea he made to the African Union recently, Mr. Yusuf said he needed outside financial support - and as many as 20,000 foreign troops - to disarm the gunmen who have ruled over the country since the last real government fell in 1991. Mr. Yusuf, who is in exile in Kenya, said he would supplement that outside force with an even larger contingent of newly recruited Somalis acting as police officers and soldiers.

"Restoration of peace and security is one of the first challenges of the new Somali government," Mr. Yusuf said.

But Council members, some of them hesitant to put Mr. Yusuf on the agenda at all, rebuffed the request for outside troops and called on the Somali leader to work to unite the country first. They did back the idea of an African observer mission to assess the situation on the ground.

"The Security Council stresses that it is the responsibility of all Somali parties to work together to consolidate the gains made so far and to achieve further progress," John C. Danforth, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement approved by the rest of the Council.

The British ambassador, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, was more blunt. Addressing the possibility of a peacekeeping force, he asked: "What peace are we going to keep?" As for a stabilizing force, he said: "To stabilize what?"
Full Article: nytimes.com

Apparently Somalia doesn't have anything anybody wants.