Mogadishu,(insidesomalia.org)- Nigeria has a battalion of around 800 soldiers ready to deploy to Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping force and could send more if needed, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Brigadier General Emeka Onwuamaegbu said one battalion of 750-850 men would travel to Mogadishu as soon as the Nigerian government gave its final approval, to help the AU force support Somalia's U.N.-backed interim government.

"For now we have prepared one battalion but we have the capacity to have more than one if the government decides that is what they want," Onwuamaegbu said.

Nigeria has sent peacekeepers into several war zones around Africa, including Sudan's Darfur region, Sierra Leone and Liberia, bolstering its status as a major continental power.

But its contribution for Somalia will still leave the AU force well below its originally intended size.

The AU had planned to send 8,000 troops to support Somalia's interim government against an insurgency by Islamist rebels.

But deployment of the full force has been repeatedly delayed since last year as lack of funds and unrelenting violence in the city led several nations, including Nigeria, to reconsider their offers to provide soldiers.

The current force, which consists of 1,600 Ugandan troops and 600 Burundians, has been unable to stem the chaos.

Fighting in the Horn of Africa nation has killed thousands of civilians and uprooted nearly a million more since early last year, worsening a humanitarian crisis already sown by drought, high food prices and rampant inflation.

The AU force, known as AMISOM, is meant to replace Ethiopian troops whose presence has inflamed the insurgency since they helped Somalia's government oust an Islamist movement at the start of 2007.

But it has been restricted by its size to securing the capital's air and sea ports, the strategic K4 junction, and guarding President Abdullahi Yusuf, senior government officials and visiting delegates.