Factional leaders attending the ongoing Somali National Reconciliation Conference have agreed to a proposal for the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force to oversee the country during its Transitional National Government (TNG), a Kenyan official mediating the talks said in Nairobi Tuesday.

"The UN will also supervise the elections after the five years interim period during which the peace keeping forces will assist in the reconciliation and the reconstruction process," said Hussein Farah Aideed, chairman of the Somali reconciliation restoration council (SRRC).

Aideed said that the peacekeeping force would be instrumental in the disarmament process towards an arms-free state in Somalia.

The factional leaders who are facing the final phase of the talks resolved to form the TNG before June 15, 2003.

Somalia had been without a functioning government since the fall of Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. A transitional government established in 2000 and headed by President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan is based in Mogadishu, which, like the rest of the country, had been torn by clan rivalries for the past decade.

Since September 2002, factional leaders have begun the Somali National Reconciliation Conference in Kenyan capital Nairobi.