Reconciliation talks begin in Somali capital

Feb 5, 2007 (MOGADISHU) — The government on Monday began a weeklong meeting with an array of leaders in the Somali capital, which has seen spiraling violence over the past month, as part of promised efforts to reconcile Somalis after 16 years of conflict.

The capital, Mogadishu, and much of southern Somalia has borne the brunt of the country’s conflict that began in 1991 when clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, sinking the Horn of Africa nation of 7 million people into chaos.

Mogadishu also saw the heaviest fighting when government forces — backed by Ethiopian troops, war planes and tanks — ousted the country’s Islamic movement from its southern Somalia strongholds that included the capital.

“I hope it will be the beginning of reconciliation among the people of Mogadishu, which is the mirror of all of Somalia and I hope if a solution is found here, other areas will be peaceful,” Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told the meeting in comments broadcast on local radio.

Ismail Moalim Musse, chairman of the government-appointed national reconciliation commission, told The Associated Press the elders, traditional chiefs, representatives of private aid and development groups were to discuss their roles in restoring security in the capital and awareness programs on peace and security. No warlords were invited.

Musse declined to comment on whether warlords who had ruled Mogadishu for most of the last 16 years had been invited to the meeting. The major Mogadishu warlords have in recent weeks handed over weapons and equipment and ordered their militias to camps where they are to be trained and join the national army.

The commission was formed in 2005 but has done little work, partly because the government was until recently unable to assert its authority beyond the southern Somalia town of Baidoa.

Late Sunday, unknown gunmen fired several rocket-propelled grenades at Mogadishu port, with the grenades only landed in the Indian Ocean and on open ground and not injuring anyone, said Abdirahman Mohamed, Mogadishu port’s security chief.

Madina Hassan, who lives 30 meters (yards) from the port, said the attack frightened her six children. “My children shouted and began to run in confusion. Some of them asked me to take them away from the house,” Hassan said.

The two-year-old transitional government only managed to establish itself in the capital in December. The ousted Islamic movement, which still has strong support in Mogadishu, has vowed to wage an Iraq-style insurgency, and clan rivalries also are a challenge for the government.

Ethiopia has said it cannot afford to keep its forces long in Somalia and has begun pulling out as the African Union presses ahead with preparations for a peacekeeping mission to Somalia. So far, the A.U. has received only half the 8,000 peacekeepers it believes is needed, but could start an initial deployment soon.

Three battalions of peacekeepers from Uganda and Nigeria are ready to be deployed in Somalia and will be airlifted in as soon as possible, a senior African Union official said last week.

On Saturday, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a top leader of the Islamic movement that was ousted last month, told The Associated Press that a proposed peacekeeping force would “not bring peace in Somalia.”

Sheik Ahmed, who spoke in a rare interview since fleeing Somalia and being taken into Kenyan protective custody, said support for the Islamic movement was growing because of the worsening security situation in Mogadishu, a city of 2 million people.

Many Somalis are deeply distrustful any peacekeeping mission after a disastrous U.N.-led mission in the 1990s.

The Islamic movement was credited with restoring order in areas of southern Somalia it controlled, but some Somalis chafed at its fundamentalist version of Islam and the U.S. accused it of harboring al-Qaida suspects.

The transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help. It has struggled to assert authority and heal clan rifts, and was confined to Baidoa until Ethiopian troops arrived to help oust the Islamic movement.

(AP)