Sudan and Arab League launch Somalia mediation

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan and the Arab League on Thursday launched an attempt in Khartoum to mediate between the interim government of Somalia and the Islamist movement which controls the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir met delegations from the two sides on Thursday morning, officials said, but it was unclear if the delegations had held face-to-face talks.

The Arab League then began a meeting of its Somalia committee, attended by Arab foreign ministers and the Somali government but not by members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the group which has taken control of Mogadishu.

Sudan invited the Somali delegations and called the Arab League meeting to avert a new war in the Horn of Africa nation.

Tensions have risen between the government and the Islamists since the latter kicked secular warlords out of Mogadishu on June 5 and went on to seize a strategic swathe of Somalia.

The government has infuriated the Islamists by calling for international peacekeepers and saying that Muslim fundamentalists from around the world helped the Islamic Courts Union secure its victory in Mogadishu.

Sudanese officials said President Abdullahi Yusuf, whose weak interim government is based in the provincial town of Baidoa, was attending the talks.

ICU chairman Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has sent a 10-man delegation led by Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, they said.

A spokesman for the interim Somali government had said on Wednesday that no direct meeting between the two Somali delegations would take place.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.