SOMALIA: Peace talks renewed in Mogadishu

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Att.Editors: The following item is from the Qatar News Agency (QNA)

MOGADISHU, Mar 29 2003 (IPS) - The interim government of Somalia and various faction leaders met today for the first time face-to-face in the Daynilleh district of Mogadishu to revive peace talks for Somalia and end the violence in its capital.

The closed doors meeting was attended by President Abdulkasim Salad Hasan and faction leaders mostly representing the G-8 groups who had recently abandoned the peace conference for Somalia, sponsored by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), in Nairobi.

Speaking to the press after the meeting, the chairman of the G-8 groups, Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, said the parties had agreed on establishing an administration for Mogadishu and pacifying the capital.

– This is an initiation of a new process, and a committee has been formed to meet those who are not present in the meeting today," said Qanyare. The parties involved ôwere inviting everyone to share with us the task of pacifying Mogadishu collectively," he said.

ôEven though I am not part of the (incumbent) government, I still know that it has been recognized internationally" including the United Nations, Qanyare said and urged Somalia’s ôseat in the international political scenarios" should not be lost.

He said the parties also agreed on convening a national reconciliation conference for the Somalis with the aim to establish a government of national unity.

The IGAD-sponsored peace talks in Kenya had failed, he said, but gave no detail about the future negotiations which were to be held in Somalia.

Most Somali politicians had abandoned the conference in Kenya over complaints that Ethiopia was meddling in the internal affairs of Somalia. Earlier in the month, the government of Mogadishu also called back its representatives, while faction leaders separately abandoned the conference. The breakaway Republic of Somaliland had not attended the talks at all.

Ethiopian-backed factions such as the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC) and Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed of Puntland are now the only political entities still remaining in the meeting, observers said.