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CNN Live At Daybreak

U.N. Team Looks At Safety For Aid Groups in Somalia

Aired January 21, 2002 - 06:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. planes are increasing reconnaissance flights over Somalia, watching for signs al Qaeda may try to regroup there.

Amid this anti-terror operation, a U.N. team is trying to determine if the country is safe enough for humanitarian groups to do their work.

CNN's Jeff Koinange reports from Mogadishu.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Under protection of Somali militia men, a United Nations security (ph) team arrives in Mogadishu for the first time since a similar team pulled out in 1995.

But this time around, the team is led by a mostly friendly crowd of Somalis, who see the arrivals as the last chance of saving a country desperately in need of international humanitarian assistance.

ASHA AHMED ABDULLA, DEP. MINISTER, NATIONAL GOVERNMENT : We're asking the international community, along with the U.N. to disarmament for the -- for the militias. And to help us and help us on reconstruction and rehabilitation for the country.

KOINANGE: The U.N. is all too aware of the dangers Somalia poses with no central government and unruly bands of militia running the countryside.

STEVE GLUNING, U.N. SECURITY COORDINATOR: We've always had threats in Mogadishu. Indeed, we've always had threats throughout Somalia. They are our day to day -- we have to live with them on a day to day basis. We can work with them and through them. Sometimes those threats manifest themselves in attacks against us. We've had shootings, we've had ambushes, we've had hostage takings, we've had grenades thrown and bombs placed.

KOINANGE: The transitional national government which controls parts of Mogadishu was keen to convince the U.N. team that it's safe to return. But it will take a lot more than just talk to persuade the world body.

Some haven't forgotten the U.N.'s past military presence and the mixed record of the U.N. humanitarian mission. These are the images that haunt the U.N.'s mission in Somalia. In 1993, UNOSOM, the federal United Nation's peacekeeping operation here, suffered one of its heaviest casualties, when scores of peacekeepers were gunned down in the streets of Mogadishu.

Seven years after UNOSOM's withdraw, the U.N.'s chief security coordinator says he's still not fully convinced Somalia is safe enough for doing business.

GLUNING: I guess my first impressions are that -- certainly in the areas I've been to -- there has been little change.

KOINANGE: The security team is to issue a final report to the U.N. secretary general on security in Somalia. But it finds itself unable to travel to areas of the country because of the lack of security.

And it's in one of those areas that potential danger lurks. Aid agencies say a third year of drought is taking its toll in some parts of the southwest. And a famine looms, threatening the lives of up to half a million Somalis.

Jeff Koinange, CNN, Mogadishu.

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