The European Union has agreed to send a military mission to Africa to help train Somalia's security forces, and will now start planning how exactly to do so, dpa quoted an EU spokesman as announcing today. The EU is keen to support Somalia's embattled interim government against Islamist rebels and to stem the tide of piracy emanating from its coast. EU member states have decided to launch "a military mission to Somalia which will consist of the training of the Somali security forces," European Commission spokesman Lutz Guellner told journalists in Brussels. Guellner is spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign-policy director, who is both vice-president of the commission and representative of the EU's 27 member states. The mission "will consist of training some 2,000 Somali recruits and is aimed to strengthen and help the Somali transitional federal government," Guellner said. Member states have been debating the possibility of dispatching such a mission since the autumn, as the government of Somalia came under increasing attack by rebels. With the decision to approve the mission, which is expected to operate in Uganda, formalized, EU member states are now set to draw up a detailed plan of campaign, with the trainers expected to deploy in the coming months.
