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JOHANNESBURG - President Thabo Mbeki said today South Africa would consider sending troops to Somalia but military operations elsewhere may limit its ability to deploy soldiers to the Horn of Africa nation.
African and Western diplomats are trying to rally a peacekeeping force to restore calm in Somalia after a war last month between Ethiopian-backed government forces and Islamists who had captured Mogadishu in June from US-backed warlords.
The Islamists were forced out of Mogadishu on December 28 but some of them fled toward the Kenyan border. The United States last week launched air strikes in the region, saying it was targeting al Qaeda members among the Islamist forces.
"Yesterday again I met the foreign minister of Kenya who had been sent by the East Africa region ... They are requesting we should assist with the deployment of troops in Somalia. I did say to the minister we will look at the matter this week," Mbeki said in an interview on state television.
"It's partly a matter of capacity because we've got people deployed in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), we've got people deployed in Burundi, we've got people deployed in the Sudan."
Ethiopia has said it wants to withdraw its troops from Somalia within weeks, raising fears the Somali government could collapse given its lack of popular support.
The African Union and East African body IGAD say they are willing in principle to send more than 8,000 peacekeepers into Somalia, provided funding is made available and member nations supply soldiers and equipment.
South Africa, the continent's major economic and diplomatic power, has been named as a potential source of some of those troops.
- REUTERS
