Thursday, March 28, 2024

Sudan Tribune

Plural news and views on Sudan

Somali president hails peace talks, blames Ethiopia for sabotage

MOGADISHU, March 18 (AFP) — Somalia’s President Abdulkassim Salat Hassan on Thursday hailed developments at a peace conference aimed at restoring law and order and pledged to hand over power peacefully.

“I will hand over power without delay to any person elected by the conference, now in its final power-sharing phase in Kenya,” Salat said during recruitment at Mogadishu Police Academy of some 170 community police members.

Salat, who heads a Transitional National Government (TNG) unrecognised beyond much of the capital, said that the third and last phase of the talks under way in Kenya would soon see the election of a parliament that would appoint a president.

But Salat accused “unpatriotic Somalis of sabotaging the peace process in the interest of neighbouring Ethiopia, which is committed to thwarting international efforts to return Somalia to its feet.”

Salat claimed that Ethiopia had “instructed” a few faction leaders to abandon the current peace process in Kenya, which started on October 15, 2002.

Salat’s remarks were referring to five Somali warlords who have left the peace talks in Nairobi and vowed last week to start a third phase of the talks inside Somalia.

They include Middle Shabelle chief Mohamed Omar Habeb, General Mohamed Said Hirsi “Morgan” of Somali Patriotic Movement, Abdulahi Sheikh Ismail of Southern Somali National Front, Aden Mohamed Nur of Rahanwein Resistance Army and Mohamud Said of Somali National Front.

The five have been in the Somali town of Jowhar, 90 kilometres (56 miles) north of Mogadishu, since they quit the Nairobi talks at the end of last month.

The talks were initiated by the seven-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) whose members include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and nominally Somalia.

Salat accused Ethiopia and an unnamed country of “lying about the existence of terrorist cells in Somalia to extort money from countries that are committed to fight international terrorism and to undermine the ongoing peace process in Kenya.”

Somalia has been without a recognised government and has been ruled by clan warlords since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.