Sudan, Arab League greet Somali delegates for peace talks
June 22, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The head of the Arab League greeted the Somalian president and representatives of Islamic militias that control most of the warn-torn country for talks in Khartoum on Wednesday.
Representatives from Egypt, Libya, Djibouti and several other Arab nations gathered in Khartoum for the peace talks mediated by Sudan, the current chair of the Arab League.
“The goal of this meeting is to save Somalia,” Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, told The Associated Press shortly before meeting with the Sudanese president.
Moussa said the one-day meeting scheduled for Thursday between delegates from the Somalian transitional government and the country’s dominant warring faction was geared at obtaining “full conciliation” from both parties.
Meanwhile, Somalia’s transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi and parliamentary Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden met Wednesday night in Khartoum with Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol to prepare for the talks.
A 10-man delegation representing the Islamic militias traveled from Somalia to Sudan on board a plane sent by the Arab League. The team was lead by Mohamed Ali Ibrahim and included the deputy head of the Islamic Courts Union, Sheikh Hussein Mohamud Jumaale, said the group’s chairman, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
“We have to make concessions for the common good of Somalia,” Ahmed told the AP, adding, however, that his group rejects government plans to deploy peacekeepers to stabilize the country.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then turned on one another. The transitional government established in 2004 has the support of the international community but wields little power and includes some of the warlords blamed for the country’s disintegration.
The Islamic leaders portray themselves as a new force capable of bringing the order for which many Somalis long. But the extremism of some of its members and the terror allegations have sparked international concern.
Militias under the umbrella of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union, a group with members ranging from moderate Muslims to fundamentalists who want to establish rule by Islamic law, took Mogadishu earlier this month after sporadic battles with an alliance of warlords that had gone on for months and killed 330 people, most of them civilians.
The president has said he would only meet with Islamic leaders once they recognized his government and showed a commitment to democracy. Yusuf made talks with the Islamic group conditional on its withdrawing its militias to Mogadishu, laying down arms and accepting the transitional constitution.
The leader of the Islamic group, Sheikh Ahmed, on Monday rejected the conditions and added his group would not talk with the government if it continues to press for peacekeepers to be deployed in Somalia.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer was in East Africa this week for discussions with regional leaders about Somalia. She met with Yusuf, his prime minister and the speaker of parliament before they left Nairobi, Kenya for Khartoum.
She called on the leaders of an Islamic militia in Somalia to turn over men accused of being al-Qaida terrorists.
(ST/AP)