Somali opposition leader quits Sudan without talks with government

April 21, 2009 (ADDIS ABABA) — Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, leader of the Asmara-based Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, has returned to the Eritrean capital without meeting with Somali officials.

Aweys was in Khartoum to discuss his support to the President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed with whom he worked in the Islamic Courts Union that ruled Somalia’s capital in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian troops.

The hardline Islamist opposition leader returned to Asmara from Khartoum where he was expected to meet President Ahmed. A diplomat from the Somali embassy in the Sudanese capital said Aweys refused to meet some members of the Somali parliament from his Hawiye caln who were there to meet him.

Jama’ Mohamed Khalib, deputy chairman of the opposition alliance told Reuters from Asmara that his group would only speak with government officials and that only after the withdrawal of the foreign troops from the country and some other conditions.

The Somali opposition alliance had dismissed earlier that Aweys had been in Khartoum for talks with the Somali president. Khartoum tries to use its influence among the warring Somali Islamists groups to support ongoing efforts to bring stability in Somalia.

Somali President Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, was elected president of the war-ravaged Horn of Africa state last January following UN-brokered reconciliation talks in Djibouti but faces a tough task to bring peace to a country wracked by civil war.

Somalia has been without an effective government since 1991 when the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled, following which the country was plunged into anarchy and factional violence. Conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of Somalis.

(ST)