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afrol News, 20 June - In a move to facilitate the work of United Nations and other relief agencies operating in Somalia, the Security Council yesterday made certain exemptions to its 1992 arms embargo against the country, in order to allow humanitarian workers to protect themselves using military equipment such as helmets and bullet-proof jackets. - There are a number of things that the humanitarian agencies working in Somalia need, and we thought that such a resolution would help the work of such agencies, the Security Council President, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury of Bangladesh, told the press after the Council vote. Adopted unanimously, the Security Council resolution stipulates that the measures imposed in January 1992 - which asked all countries to implement an embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Somalia - shall not apply to "protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets, temporarily exported to Somalia by United Nations personnel, representatives of the media and humanitarian and development workers and associated personnel for their personal use only." The Security Council also decided that the embargo should "not apply to supplies of non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian or protective use", if the supplies were approved in advance, according to UN reports. Attacks on humanitarian workers by the warring Somali clans had lead to that most operated only from neighbouring Kenya. A UN humanitarian source told a UN media that there was "a feeling that we should be, cautiously, making a move back into areas in Somalia... and getting out of our Nairobi offices".
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