UNITED NATIONS, September 23 -- Since African peacekeepers in Somalia are paid less than three-quarters of what the UN pays elsehwere, "they all want to go to Darfur," African Union Commission President Jean Ping told Inner City Press on Thursday.
Outside a closed door ministerial meeting at the UN on Somalia, Ping and UN envoy Augustine Mahiga both defended the AU troops' shelling of markets and mosques in Mogadishu.
Inner City Press has asked about the call by the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights for an investigation of the AU peacekeepers' shelling of civilian areas.
Mahiga said that all what is being called for is a "Mapping Exercise" -- the same term used for the report on genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo which has led Rwanda's Paul Kagame government to threaten to pull its troops out of Darfur.
Days after the Prime Minister of the UN-based Transitional Federal Government resigned, Inner City Press asked the two men what this portends for Somalia.
Mahiga said that a new Prime Minister will be named. But that has happened before.
Inside the meeting, three separate sources tell Inner City Press, Ugandan President Museveni said that the UN "Security Council has donated Somalia to a terrorist organization." When Inner City Press asked Mahiga about the quote, he said it was another way of saying that the international community should do more. Ya might say. Watch this site.
