Somalia's newly elected president, Abdullahi Yusuf, has asked the African Union to send 20,000 peacekeepers to disarm militias controlling his lawless Horn of Africa country, an AU spokesman said on Saturday. "The president has formally asked the AU for a 20,000-strong peacekeeping force to help in collecting millions of small arms known to be owned by the Somali people," AU spokesman Adam Thiam told reporters. He said the request would be considered by the AU's Peace and Security Council which is due to meet on Monday. Yusuf made the appeal to AU Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare during a meeting with top AU officials on Saturday in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Yusuf was elected as Somalia's president after almost two years of stop-start talks held in neighbouring Kenya because of insecurity at home. The former warlord made his first appeal for peacekeepers at his swearing-in ceremony last week. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, also on a visit to AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, said the European Union would offer funding for a peacekeeping mission and consider training Somali security forces. "The president (of Somalia) has not given me any specific request. But if the request comes ... the EU will assist Somalia and finance a peacekeeping mission as it has done for Darfur," Solana told a news conference, adding Brussels would host a donor conference on Somalia on Nov. 28. Earlier Solana announced the EU would contribute more than $100 million to an enlarged AU force in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, but gave no details on what the EU might offer for an operation in Somalia.
