RAMALLAH (AFP) - The Palestinians are to present their bid for United Nations membership on September 20, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Malki told AFP on Saturday.

“Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will personally present the request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon... at the opening of the sixty-sixth session,” on September 20, Malki said.

Abbas will “insist on this historic initiative and Ban Ki-moon will present the request to the Security Council,” he said.

Malki added that the Palestinian Authority chose September because Lebanon, holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council, would be in a strong position to push the bid forward.

“Lebanon will hold the presidency of the Security Council in September and this will help us because the president of the council has special prerogatives, which is crucial,” he said.

Following the collapse of direct peace talks with Israel in September last year, the Palestinians have adopted a diplomatic strategy of looking to secure UN recognition for a state along the frontiers which existed before the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Palestinians had already expressed their intention to ask the Security Council for UN membership in September, in the absence of negotiations with Israel before the annual UN General Assembly.

But they face opposition from the United States, which threatens to derail the Palestinian bid through its Security Council veto. An application for UN membership must be approved by the council.

To circumvent the veto, the Palestinians could turn to the General Assembly, asking it to “raise [their] status to a UN observer and non-member state”.

That formula would allow them to become a full member of all UN agencies, such as WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF, where the Palestinians presently have no presence.

Malki said he expected that “more than 130 countries would recognise the state of Palestine” along 1967 borders.

The Palestinians are determined to go to the UN, in the absence of a realistic prospect of resuming peace talks, which have been stalled for nearly a year.

To resume talks, Palestinian officials insist on a moratorium on new Jewish settlements, including in annexed East Jerusalem, which Israel has refused despite intense international pressure.

The Israeli government, which is opposed to a unilateral approach by the Palestinians, this week announced its intention to continue building settlements in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia on Saturday called for the creation of a special humanitarian force to protect food aid convoys and camps in the famine-hit Horn of Africa country.

Islamist rebels mostly retreated from the capital Mogadishu last weekend but the threat of guerrilla-style attacks such as suicide bombings remains despite their battlefield defeat.

The government and a 9,000-strong African peacekeeping force admit they do not control all of the capital even after the rebel withdrawal, placing thousands of Somali refugees who are streaming into Mogadishu searching for food in danger.

The pullout by Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabaab insurgents has raised hopes that humanitarian groups will be able to step up aid deliveries after years of obstruction by the militant group.

Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali held a joint news conference with Valerie Amos, UN emergency relief coordinator, visiting the capital.

"We met today with Valerie Amos... we have discussed the current humanitarian situation in Somalia and the best way that we can assist with humanitarian aid to the people," said Ali.

"We have also raised the issue of creating a special humanitarian force, which has dual purposes. First to secure and protect the food aid convoy, and to protect the camps and stabilise the city and fight banditry and looting."

Ali did not say who would make up such a force.

Earlier this month, government troops fired shots and fought among themselves as some looted food meant for famine victims provided by the World Food Programme at the Badbaado camp near the city.

On Saturday, Somali police and the African Union troops said they had discovered 137 artillery shells in a disused house in the capital and destroyed them.

"The extremists were storing up large stocks of munitions in order to make improvised bombs to launch a campaign of terror in Mogadishu," said Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the AMISOM peacekeeping force that backs Somali's beleaguered government.

"Large areas of the city have to be cleared of these types of weapons stores and secured in the longer term so that the city can return to some semblance of normality and to do this we need more troops."

Amos shocked

Amos called for improved security for food convoys, and said she was shocked at the conditions after touring a hospital and meeting Somalis who had walked long distances to find food.

"The prime minister and I discussed the importance of security to ensure that humanitarian operations can continue... I am confident that with an improvement of security we will be able to do more to help those people who are desperately in need," she said.

"I was shocked to see some of the children at the hospital that I visited, and I can't imagine what it feels like to be a parent of these children suffering that level of malnutrition."

A cholera epidemic is spreading in the country, especially among people driven to the capital by a lack of food and water.

About 3.6 million people in Somalia are at risk of starvation. Some 12.4 million people in the Horn of Africa - including Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti - are affected by the worst drought in decades, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands of people have already died.

Amos was scheduled on Sunday to visit Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp just over Somalia's border in neighbouring Kenya. Declared full in 2008, it has seen an influx of about 1,500 Somali refugees a day since late July.