Another case of the UN screwing Africa...

Looks like they won't help and the AU can't do much either.

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- Somalia's new president urged the U.N. Security Council, meeting in a special session in Kenya on Friday, to help fund an African peacekeeping force to bring stability to nation.

The Security Council, which in the early 1990s sent a peacekeeping mission to Somalia that ended in a bloody withdrawal, called on donor countries and regional groups to back the country financially and politically.

But in a statement, the 15-nation body did not explicitly offer support for deploying an Africa Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Somalia, which President Abdullahi Yusuf has been calling for since he was elected last month.

British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry questioned the role of a potential peacekeeping force: "If we have a peacekeeping force, what peace are we going to keep?"

Yusuf has also asked the 53-nation AU to send 20,000 peacekeepers to help disarm the militias that rule the damaged country.

The AU is considering the request, but the cash-strapped organization is already overstretched by trying to monitor a cease-fire in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

Yusuf was elected by a reconciliation conference held in Kenya last month, seeking to end the chaos that has gripped his country of up to 10 million people since the overthrow of Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Yusuf has yet to return to his Horn of Africa nation, which militias have carved into well-armed clan fiefdoms.

He told the Security Council that his transitional government could not raise any money for security for some time.

"I would like to request the Council to take necessary measures to provide the financial and diplomatic support that is urgently needed," Yusuf said.

The Security Council came to Nairobi mainly to spur a Sudanese peace pact. It was the first time it has conducted official meetings outside its New York headquarters in 14 years.

The U.N. body also invited Somali leaders and foreign ministers from neighboring countries to the meeting.

It welcomed progress made by the national reconciliation process conducted in Nairobi and said it hoped for a broad-based government inside Somalia soon, calling on all parties "to seize this historic opportunity for peace."

Kenya, which is flooded by thousands of refugees from Somalia, voiced support for the Somali leader's request for peacekeepers.

John Koech, Kenya's minister for regional cooperation, also urged the Council to help return the Somali government home and asked it to consider sanctions on "on any person or group" who tried to hinder its work and disrupt the peace process.