Somalia faces a serious threat of greatly expanded violence if the UN Security Council creates an exemption to the arms embargo now applied to the Horn of Africa country, a global think tank, International Crisis Groups (ICG), warned here Wednesday.

In a statement issued in Nairobi, the Brussels-based organization said the UN arms embargo on Somalia has been critical for limiting violence and its humanitarian consequences in Somalia and lifting it will destabilize the country.

"Lifting the arms embargo for any reason at this critical time risks destabilizing the transitional institutions, derailing the peace process and rekindling civil conflict," the ICG stressed.

The UN Security Council will on Thursday consider such an exemption in order to permit deployment of a peace support operation by the regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

The deployment has been endorsed by the African Union (AU) and would be followed by an AU mission.

In letters to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to the Permanent Representatives of UN Security Council members, ICG President Gareth Evans urged the UN Security Council to defer consideration of the issue at this time.

"Under the right circumstances and with adequate planning, the proposed mission could contribute to restoring peace and government," said Evans. "Right now, however, the exemption would be premature and counterproductive."

"The problem is that the interim president's appeal for foreign troops is very deeply divisive in Somalia, and has yet to receive the unambiguous approval of the Transitional Federal Institutions, " it said.

"An external military intervention in the Somali conflict at this stage would, in Crisis Group's judgment, undermine both the prospects for peace in the country and development of the AU's peacekeeping capacity," it warned.

Ministers from the IGAD, which facilitated Somalia's two-year reconciliation process, last month appealed to the United Nations to lift the arms embargo on Somalia, saying the AU troops were ready to deploy but had been stopped by the embargo.

Somalia's exiled transitional government last month officially relocated from the relative safety of neighboring Kenya to the Horn of Africa nation to embark on a key task of rebuilding the war-torn nation after decades of anarchy. However, relocating without foreign peacekeepers, the transitional government fears the militia-rule in Somalia will prevent ministers and their teams from carrying out their work in safety.

Source: Xinhua