UAE urges India to lift Somalia embargo

As the world grapples with the issue of piracy, the United Arab Emirates made a strong pitch for ending the arms embargo on Somalia and nudged India to work towards doing so.

As the world grapples with the issue of piracy, the United Arab Emirates made a strong pitch for ending the arms embargo on Somalia and nudged India to work towards doing so.

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However, India believes the arms embargo on Somalia must stay for the time being as the institutions of governance are non-existent there. The United Nations monitoring group on arms embargo on Somalia had earlier said that Arab nations had violated the embargo, which has been in place since 1992.

During his meetings with external affairs minister SM Krishna in India on June 26-27, UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said the Somalian government should be equipped to take on the heavily armed pirates.

He said that besides lifting the arms embargo, arms training should be given to Somalian police to defeat the pirates. But India maintains that “there should be greater international coordination” in dealing with piracy.

“We shouldn’t forget that there are not many functional institutions of governance in Somalia”, a ministry official said.