UNITED NATIONS (insidesomalia.org) - The U.N. Security Council renewed authority on Wednesday for a small African Union peace force in Somalia and agreed to debate next month the thorny issue of whether U.N. peacekeepers should go there.

A council resolution extended for six months U.N. endorsement of the AU mission in the lawless country, which currently consists of two Ugandan battalions, totaling some 1,600 troops, and an advance party of 192 Burundians.

The force, known as AMISOM, gets its mandate from the AU but also needs U.N. backing, partly to exempt it from an arms embargo on the Horn of Africa state, racked by factional fighting since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991.

The Somali government and the AU appealed to the Security Council last Friday to send a peacekeeping force there to replace AMISOM, but the 15-nation body delayed a response until next month.

The council is still awaiting a delayed report from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on peacekeeping prospects.

Both Ban and the council have been wary of sending U.N. troops to Somalia, scene of daily shootouts and mortar battles between Islamist insurgents, warlords and Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces.

Some Security Council members are keener than others on a U.N. peace force, with South Africa a leading proponent but Britain and France more cautious.

South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo voted for the resolution but urged the council to consider a U.N. force as soon as possible. He told journalists later that "we really feel that the U.N. is letting down the people of Somalia.

"We have no illusions - Somalia is a bad neighborhood," he added. "But this council has a mandated responsibility to deal with bad neighborhoods if they threaten international peace and security."

Talk of outside intervention in Somalia is still colored by the killing of U.S. troops there in 1993 in the "Black Hawk Down" battle that marked the beginning of the end for a U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force.

Ban's report is due on March 10. It has been delayed by problems encountered by two U.N. fact-finding missions to Somalia, on whose work it will be based.

The U.N. refugee agency last month described the conflict there, which has uprooted more than 1 million people, as the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis, even worse than that in Sudan's Darfur region.

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