Somalia’s Islamic militia give govt list of demands
Sept 4, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Islamic militants who control much of southern Somalia have given the country’s weak government a list of demands, including that the administration reverse its call for international peacekeepers, officials involved in peace talks said Monday.
The Islamic group gave the document to government negotiators after the talks began in Khartoum on Saturday, according to two government officials. The talks were continuing this week.
Awadh Asharah, a spokesman for the government negotiating team, said the administration has received the document and issued a response, but he offered no details.
Somalia’s virtually powerless government in the past has called for peacekeepers to help it establish a hold on the country. Parliament has endorsed a security plan drawn up by President Abdullahi Yusuf’s government that includes a role for a regional peacekeeping mission.
The issue of peacekeepers will be discussed Tuesday at a meeting of leaders of the seven-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development, senior Kenyan foreign affairs official Thuita Mwangi said Sunday in Nairobi.
Ibrahim Hassan Adow, the Islamic group’s foreign affairs chief, said over the weekend that foreign interference would be “a recipe for the renewal of civil war,” alluding to reports that Ethiopian troops had taken up position in three Somali towns to protect the government.
Somalia hasn’t had an effective central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, pulling the country into anarchy.
The current government was established two years ago with the support of the U.N., but has failed to assert any power outside its base in Baidoa, which is 250 kilometers from the capital, Mogadishu.
Clerics and militiamen set up a network of Islamic courts in a bid to restore order by enforcing Islamic law. In June, they swept through Somalia, seizing control of much of the south, including the capital, Mogadishu.
The two sides held talks in June, but failed to resume them in July as planned amid divisions within the government about how to handle the Islamic courts’ ascendancy in Somalia.
Islamic leaders initially refused to attend after reports that Ethiopian troops had entered Somalia. The Islamic courts later reversed their position, however, saying they wanted to discuss the Ethiopian presence with the government directly. Ethiopia has denied sending troops to Somalia.
Yusuf’s representatives have said they are open to the Islamic leaders being part of the government but only under a clan-based formula that was used to form the government and parliament. The formula wasn’t based on what territory leaders held but on what clan they belong to.
(AP/ST)