Three stories that update, most recently, the Reuters item from earlier today (updated originally to add the one from the "Washington Post"; updated further, on Wednesday, to reflect a newer version of the BBC story on the source page):
From the BBC...
Ten countries have been violating a United Nations arms embargo to send weapons to Somalia, according to a UN-commissioned report.
Seven countries - among them Iran and Syria - have supplied military personnel and weapons to the Union of Islamic Courts militia.
While three countries are helping arm Somalia's weak interim government.
The report is due to be discussed by a UN Security Council committee on Friday.
The countries arming the Islamists are Syria, Iran, Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia, according to the report.
Ethiopia, Uganda and Yemen are named as the countries supplying Somalia's interim government.
The report, by experts monitoring the embargo, also suggests that Iran may have tried to trade arms for uranium to further its nuclear ambitions.
Ethiopia and Eritrea are named as the biggest violators of the arms embargo in Somalia, where there has not been a proper government for more than 15 years.
"There is the distinct possibility that the momentum towards a military solution inside Somalia may spill over into a direct state-to-state conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, as well as acts of terrorism in other vulnerable states of the region," Reuters news agency quoted the report as saying.
Many of the countries named in the report reject the accusations.
In Nairobi, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appealed to the transitional government and the UIC to resume peace talks "very quickly".
"We have a very serious situation in Somalia," he told the conference on climate change.
UIC representatives are expected to meet regional leaders at an economic summit summit in Djibouti later.
'Plane-load'
What is most striking about this report is the detailed links between countries such as Iran, Syria and Lebanon and the Islamic Courts Union, says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan at the UN in New York.
For example, the authors say 720 Somali fighters went to Lebanon to help Hezbollah fight Israel in July.
Syria is said to have sent an aircraft full of guns to the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Iran is reported to have sent three shipments of arms to Somalia between July and September.
One paragraph in the report says two Iranians were in Somalia looking into getting uranium in exchange for supplying arms.
No further details are offered. Iran wants uranium to further its nuclear programme, which it insists is peaceful, while western countries suspect Iran of wanting a nuclear bomb.
Syria, Iran and the Hizbollah group, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and Libya, have all been accused of sending illegal arms, training or other support to Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union, in a report by a United Nations sanctions monitoring group.
The draft report, which comes as the US is being encouraged to co-opt Tehran and Damascus into finding a solution to the conflict in Iraq, also suggests Iran may be looking for uranium in return for its support.
The group’s findings underline growing fears of the widening international implications of the battle between the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which took control of the capital Mogadishu in June, and the struggling UN-backed Somali transitional government.
The interim government is receiving military support from Uganda, Yemen and Ethiopia, the report says, in what many see as a proxy war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. “Arms flows into Somalia . . . have dramatically increased in terms of numbers of arms, frequency of delivery and weapons’ sophistication,” the report says, “aggressively fed by a growing number of individual states, and to a lesser degree, arms trading networks.”
However, Matt Bryden, a regional analyst who specialises in Somalia, said nobody else in the intelligence or diplomatic community was aware of Hizbollah’s involvement and no one had ever suggested that Somalia has uranium.
Previously there had been false reports of terrorist groups trying to get their hands on uranium, he added.
The report says that while most of the arms supplied to the ICU were smaller-scale, “ominously, new and more sophisticated types of weapons are also coming into Somalia including portable surface-to-air missiles. . . multiple rocket launchers and second generation, infrared-guided anti-tank weapons.” While the bulk of arms for the Islamic Courts appeared to come from Eritrea, the UN monitors “received information that the government of Iran has provided at least three separate consignments of arms and ammunition, and medical supplies . . . to the ICU”, according to a draft of the report seen by the FT.
On 25 July, for example, an aircraft containing a shipment of arms from Iran arrived at Baledogle airport near Mogadishu and was met by the ICU head of Security Affairs. The shipment included 45 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.
In a letter to the UN, Tehran rejected the arms-supply allegations.
The monitoring group consisted of four experts – from Belgium, the US, Kenya and Colombia.
They interviewed government officials in the region, including from the Transitional Federal Institutions and the ICU, as well as diplomats, civil society organisations, aid agencies and Somali businessmen.
By Colum Lynch of the "Washington Post"...
Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia are providing arms, training and financing to Islamic militants as they seize political and military control in the East African state of Somalia, according to a confidential U.N. report.
The 86-page report, prepared by a panel of U.N. weapons and financial experts, warned that the conflict could reignite a war between Eritrea, the chief foreign sponsor of the Islamics, and Ethiopia, which is backing Somalia's weak transitional federal government.
The report asserts that a huge inflow of outside military assistance, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, is contributing to the emergence of an alliance of militants called the Islamic Courts Union as the first Islamic government since the United States overthrew Afghanistan's Taliban in 2002. It warns that Somalia could become the site of insurgency tactics used in Iraq, including "suicide bombers, assassinations and other forms of terrorist and insurgent-type activities."
"The strongly sustained trend toward total military, economic and political dominance by the Islamic Courts Union in central and southern Somalia continues," according to the report by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia, which will be presented to the Security Council this week. "They are currently the most powerful force in Somalia."
The report was obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post; it was first reported Monday by Reuters. The report's authors recommend that the Security Council tighten a U.N. arms embargo, impose sanctions on Somali individuals and businesses buying weapons, and launch an international diplomatic effort to dissuade states from arming the combatants.
The developments in Somalia represent a setback for the United States, which had sought to prevent the militants from taking power. But the report provided no evidence to suggest that the United States provided clandestine support to anti-Islamic forces, as officials in Somalia's interim government have alleged.
It did, however, underscore the degree to which the United States's chief Middle East rivals, Iran and Syria, and its allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are prepared to challenge U.S. interests in East Africa.
The U.N. team detailed three Iranian consignments of arms, ammunition, medical supplies and doctors to the Islamic fighters since summer. The report says one July shipment included land mines, 1,000 machine guns and M-79 rocket launchers, and 45 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The report also says two Iranian nationals were negotiating the possibility of selling more weapons for access to Somalia's uranium deposits.
The report asserts that Syria has trained 200 Somali fighters in guerrilla warfare tactics and that Libya has provided arms and advanced military training to another 100. Libya also allegedly provided $1 million to finance future training missions and to pay salaries.
Iran and Syria denied in separate letters to the U.N. team that they had shipped weapons to Somalia or trained Somali forces. The U.N. team did not receive a response from the Libyan government. Representatives from the Islamic Courts Union said the allegations that they had received illegal arms shipments are "baseless."
To shore up support for their cause, Somalia's Islamic fighters provided military support in the summer to Hezbollah, sending 720 of its most experienced fighters to help battle Israeli forces, according to the report. The fighters were promised $2,000 in payments to their families for serving, and as much as $30,000 if they fell in battle.
In exchange for their backing, Lebanon allegedly provided advanced training to Somali fighters and sent five Hezbollah advisers to Somalia. Lebanon also allegedly solicited support for the movement from Iran and Syria.
The report cites a case in which Egypt agreed to train Somalia's Islamic militants. And it accuses Saudi Arabia of providing several shipments of food and medicine to Islamic combatants. Egypt denied the allegation; Saudi Arabia has yet to fully respond to the charges.
The report asserts that the most flagrant violations of the U.N. arms embargo have been committed by Eritrea and Ethiopia, which have sent dozens of weapons shipments and thousands of combat troops into Somalia on behalf of their proxies. It also charged that Uganda and Yemen had joined Ethiopia in supporting Somalia's losing Transitional Federal Government.
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