Monday, August 05, 2013
President Uhuru Kenyatta has urged Africa to remain focused on rooting out Al Shabaab and stabilizing Somalia.
President Kenyatta said he saw no room for wavering or distraction on the objective of curbing Al Shabaab’s heinous acts of terrorism in which people, mainly in East Africa, had lost lives and property destroyed.
“Our first, second and third priorities must remain to root out Al Shabaab and fully stabilize the Somali state. There can be no wavering or distraction from that clearly and openly stated objective,” President Kenyatta told a summit of states contributing troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
The tough-talking President Kenyatta told the Somali Federal Government that it needed to match the Troop Contributing Countries’ sacrifices by deploying all its energies to AMISOM’s success.
“This is an imperative from which we cannot walk away. Failure is not an option,” he said.“We have all made enormous sacrifices towards this cause. We are
determined that those sacrifices will not be in vain,” President
Kenyatta added.
AMISOM’s intervention in Somalia had made it one of the successful
peace-keeping operations by Africa for Africa, President Kenyatta told
the summit at Munyonyo Resort, on the shores of Lake Victoria.
He strongly pushed for AMISOM to continue operating independently of
the UN Peace-Keeping Operation in Somalia. Folding AMISOM under the UN
force would render the gains it had made invisible, he said.
President Kenyatta called on the United Nations and the international
community to make available adequate funding for AMISOM to fulfill its
objective of stabilizing Somalia.
“We appeal to the international community to offer continued support
through provision of adequate resources to facilitate effective and
efficient operations,” the President said.