MOGADISHU — The Somali government on Monday expressed frustration at the cost of trips by Nairobi-based UN officials and urged the world body’s offices for the country to relocate to Mogadishu within 90 days. Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed called for the move two days after the foreign ministry denied entry to two UN human rights officials on the grounds they had failed in their mission.

“We call on UN aid agencies to move their offices and staff members involved in operations to assist Somalia to Mogadishu, and I ask for this relocation to happen within 90 days from today,” he told reporters. “We know that a lot of money is spent at offices in Nairobi and people claim they cannot go and operate in Somalia but I say that Somalia is not worse than Iraq and Afghanistan, where UN agencies are active on the ground,” he added.

Nairobi is the world’s third largest UN base after New York and Geneva and the activities of agencies involved in relief, development and policy for Somalia are planned remotely in the Kenyan capital. Only a handful of UN staff are based in Mogadishu, at a secure compound near the airport.

Twenty years of almost uninterrupted conflict in Somalia have left the capital in ruins and Mogadishu is considered one of the world’s most dangerous cities. The world body remains haunted by its disastrous peacekeeping missions in the 1990s and the staff it did have on the ground was withdrawn after attacks and threats from the Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab insurgents who have controlled most of the country over the past two years.

Thanks to an offensive by the African Union force in Mogadishu, Mohamed’s transitional government has reclaimed control of large swathes of the capital and has been keen to rekindle normal activity in the safest areas. Western powers, which are also the main backers of the Somali government, have in the past turned a deaf ear to rare calls by some embassies to move back to Mogadishu.

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