Secretary-General at press encounter with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (answer to question on Somalia)

SG: Of course, soon after this conference is over the Foreign Minister and I and the President of Somalia will have a joint press conference where we will be able to announce the adoption of a joint declaration in which the participating countries will agree to joint action. It's an action-oriented concrete plan. This is what we have been working on and we have been getting strong support from the Member States.

First of all, we need to be sure that there is peace and stability on the ground and we need to provide decent job opportunities to young people, and to Somali people in general, so that they can contribute to social-economic development of the society. For that to be possible we need to strengthen the national capacity of the Somali Government, training and supporting their national forces and policy capacity.

And at the same time for that to be possible we need to strengthen the capacity of AMISOM, the African Union Mission, composed of now more than 6,000 African soldiers from Burundi and Uganda and elsewhere.

Then we need to take again concrete measures to eradicate piracy which has been causing serious problems to smooth international shipping and trade. We are now in the process of working on a report for the Security Council as soon as possible so that we can first of all ensure those pirates engaged in piracy will be punished –prosecuted, indicted and punished. And we also need to support those countries like Kenya, Seychelles and Tanzania have agreed to persecute and detain those pirates and take judiciary procedures.

There are many other issues. However we are now looking at this in a comprehensive way to help the Somali government and people so that they can stand on their own and integrate as responsible members of the international community. More detailed matters will be announced soon.