THE Security Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to exempt reporters and humanitarian workers in Somalia from a nine-year-old arms embargo, to enable them to wear flak jackets and helmets. It adopted a resolution stating that the embargo, imposed in January 1992, “shall not apply to protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets… for their personal use only.” Somalia has been without a government and wracked by interclan warfare since the overthrow on January 27, 1991 of the 22-year-old dictatorship of the late Mohamed Siad Barre. There are 60 permanent UN staff, another 200 who travel in and out of the country, and about 1,000 locally recruited staff. – AFP