Somali govt to meet rivals next month
Somalia’s transitional government will meet next week for peace talks with Islamic militant rivals who have seized control of much of the country, a presidential aide said today.
“We will go to Khartoum without any pre-conditions,” Abdirizak Adam, President Abdullahi Yusuf’s chief of staff said after meeting Francois Lonseny Fall, the special representative to Somalia of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Fall, based in neighbouring Kenya, arrived today to deliver an appeal to Yusuf from the UN Security Council for his government to attend peace talks scheduled for August 1-2 in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Fall was scheduled later today to go to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, to meet with officials of the Islamic group.
A round of the Arab League-sponsored peace talks that had been scheduled for Saturday fell apart when the government side refused to attend and the Islamic group walked out.
At a first round of talks in June, the two sides had recognised each other and struck a non-aggression pact. But since then relations have sharply deteriorated. The Islamic group, which the United States has linked to terrorists, has continued attacks, making clear it sees itself as the country’s main authority even though it is the transitional government that enjoys international recognition.
At one point last week, Islamic troops moved near the only town the government holds, Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of Mogadishu. The troops pulled back, and neighbouring Ethiopia responded by moving troops across the border and into Baidoa to protect the government, which has no military.
Ethiopia’s move worsened tensions. The largely Christian country is the longtime enemy of Somalia, which is mostly Muslim. Somali government leaders have denied the Ethiopians are here, perhaps because they don’t want to appear beholden to a traditional adversary.
Anti-Ethiopian sentiment runs high. More than 5,000 enraged Somalis packed a stadium in the capital, Mogadishu, for an anti-Ethiopian rally yesterday at which a top Islamic militia official said he would produce “corpses or POWs” to prove Ethiopia had sent soldiers.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, carving much of the country into armed camps ruled by violence and clan law.
The transitional government, which includes some warlords linked to the violence of the past, was established almost two years ago with the support of the United Nations. But the body wields no real power.
The Islamic militia’s rise has prompted concerns in the United States, which accuses the group of harbouring al-Qaida leaders responsible for deadly 1998 bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
