The U.N. Security Council welcomed the African Union (AU) initiative to send troops to Somalia and supported the announcement by Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf to shortly convene a national reconciliation conference, Slovakian Ambassador Peter Burian, the current Security Council president, said Friday. Members of the security council supported the rapid deployment of a U.N. technical assessment mission with a view to making recommendations to the Security Council on future security needs in Somalia, Burian told reporters. Members of the security council stress the need in Somalia for broad-based and representative institutions and an inclusive political process, as envisaged in the Transitional Federal Charter, said Burian. One proposal is for the AU to deploy peacekeepers for six months before transferring the mandate to the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters on the sidelines of the AU Peace and Security Summit in Addis Ababa earlier this week that this is an issue that the council would have to discuss.
