A UN team will head to the Horn of Africa next week to explore ways of supporting the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Somalia where violence sees an upsurge, UN said on its website on Friday.

The team includes the UN deputy special representative for Somalia, Charles Petrie, representatives from UN Political Office for Somalia as well as departments of peacekeeping, field support and political affairs at the UN Headquarters in New York.

Talks will be held in Nairobi and Addis Ababa to discuss ways of supporting the AU mission as well as Somalia's transitional security forces and police.

UN special representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said he was hopeful that the visit by the team would result in concrete and swift action.

Violence continues in Somalia, which has not had a functioning central government since 1991, despite the signing of the UN-facilitated Djibouti Agreement last June by the two sides in the country -- the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia.

Both sides agreed in the pact to end their conflict and called on the UN to deploy an international stabilization force to the troubled nation.

But on Thursday the World Food Programme reported one staff member was shot dead by gunmen near the capital Mogadishu, the second killing of its worker in the country within three days.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stated that conditions are not yet right for a UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia, and recommended strengthening the AU mission in the country through financing, logistical support, training, equipment and other reinforcements facilitated by the bloc and its member states.

Somalia has a population of some 3.2 million people, 43 percent to whom need humanitarian assistance as a result of conflicts and drought.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2009)