Ethiopia’s Zenawi pays surprise visit to Mogadishu

June 5, 2007 (MOGADISHU) — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi paid a surprise visit to the Somalian capital Mogadishu on Tuesday and promised to withdraw his troops from the war-wracked country once peace is achieved, officials said.

“The prime minister of Ethiopia held talks with top government officials and local elders and said that his troops would be withdrawn as soon as peace was achieved in Mogadishu and Somalia in general,” said Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji.

Ethiopian troops helped the weak Somali government oust an Islamist movement — which had called for a holy war against Addis Ababa — from the country’s southern and central regions at the end of last year.

They have been fighting an Islamist-led insurgency recent months and are due to be replaced by a peacekeeping force that the African Union is struggling to assemble.

As violent attacks in Mogadishu increased, a Somali driver working for aid agency Doctors Without Borders was shot dead by the Somali prime minister’s bodyguards on Tuesday after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber, police said.

Another Somali employee of the medical charity was injured in the shooting at the notoriously dangerous K4 junction in southern Mogadishu.

“The driver died on the spot while another person travelling with him was wounded by a gunshot from the same group,” said a police officer, declining to be named.

Meanwhile, Somali officials said that a national reconciliation conference would take place next week as planned, despite increasing violence in Mogadishu including a suicide car bomb attack on the prime minister’s residence two days ago.

The Somali National Congress, planned to start June 14, has been delayed several times because of insecurity and difficulties in gathering funding.

“We do not see any inconvenience that would delay the conference. We are planning to convene the delegates together as scheduled,” Ali Mahdi Mohamed, the main conference organiser, told AFP.

“I encourage all Somali sectors to participate in the reconciliation process,” the Somali government spokesman quoted Ethiopian premier Meles as saying before he left Mogadishu Tuesday afternoon.

Renegade Somali Islamist leaders in Eritrea have called on all Somalis to boycott the planned reconciliation talks, warning of further violence in the war-torn country if they go ahead.

The Somali interim government has repeatedly said that Islamist leaders can only take part as representatives of their clans, not of their movement as they wish.

Somalia has been without an effective government since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre sparked a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.

(AFP)