ENA
25 January 2007
Addis Ababa — The United States is ready to offer more funds to help African Union troops deploy quickly to Somalia as Ethiopian forces wind down their presence there, Reuters reported from Brussels quoting a U.S. official.
U.S Deputy Assistant Secretary on Africa James Swan called on other international bodies to provide urgent financial and logistical support to the AU as it struggles to raise a force of about 8,000 peacekeepers for Somalia, the report said.
"We are eager to see a rapid movement to deployment of the AU peace support operation," Swan said in an interview in Brussels with Reuters and a European weekly magazine after talks with EU officials on the conflict.
"To that end, we have identified funding that could be made available to fund (air) lift and equipment initially for the Ugandans but that could also be available to other troop contributors later," Reuters quoted Swan as saying.
Such funding would be in addition to the 14 million USD already earmarked by the United States for the AU force in a wider 40.5 million USD package announced earlier this month, the report added.
"We would also hope that not only ourselves but also other partners would provide additional assistance to the AU as it may request it," Swan said.
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