KENYAN PM wants permanent African seat on UN Security Council
The junior partner in Kenya’s divided unity government, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, also in the US to address the UN General Assembly, has called for reforms in the UN to make it more democratic. Sounding like South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki once did, he said the Security Council needs to be enlarged to include permanent, veto-bearing African seats. He also called on the Security Council to take decisive action on the anarchy in Somalia, saying Africans cannot find sustainable solutions to their challenges when given so little voice in the quest for peace. A permanent African Security Council presence is an idea continuously tested. The AU and UN are at loggerheads over African commitment to the Somalia problem, let alone the AU’s attitude to issues such as the Lockerbie bombing. And recent calls by Somalia’s fragile government for the UN to step in and take over from under-resourced AU peacekeepers were highlighted by the subsequent bombing of AU headquarters in Mogadishu.
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