LONDON —World leaders pledged new help to tackle terrorism and piracy in Somalia, but they insisted Thursday that the troubled East African nation must quickly form a stable government and threatened penalties against those who hamper its progress.
Nations pledged new funding, additional training for soldiers and coast guards, increased cooperation over terrorism, and a new drive to root out those who finance and profit from piracy, after the shipping industry paid out $135 million in ransoms last year.
“For two decades, Somalia has been torn apart by famine, bloodshed and some of the worst poverty on earth,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said, as 55 nations and international organizations, including Somalia’s United Nations-backed transitional government, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon attended the talks.
“If the rest of us just sit back and look on, we will pay a price for doing so,” he added.
Cameron warned that Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab could export terrorism to Europe and the United States, with dozens of British and American citizens traveling to Somalia to train and fight with the Islamists.
Somalia has had transitional administrations for the past seven years but has not had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a longtime dictator and turned on one another, plunging the nation into chaos.
Somalia’s weak transitional administration — which holds Mogadishu with the support of about 10,000 African Union soldiers — has been boosted after the U.N. on Wednesday approved increasing the size of the African Union peacekeeping mission to about 17,700.
Cameron suggested international airstrikes could be used to target extremist training camps and pirate bases, though his office insisted he was referring to U.S.-led drone strikes, which have targeted militants inside Somalia, rather than fighter jets.
Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said he would continue to support targeted international airstrikes if civilians were protected.
