Somalia: Interim Government May Parlay With Islamists

AKI

Mogadishu, 3 July (AKI) - Somalia’s weak interim government is mooting the despatch of a delegation in the next few days to hold talks with the leadership of the country’s Union of Islamic Courts, which has seized control of the capital, Mogadishu and much of the south of the country, according to a journalist quoted by the SomaliNet website, Mohammed Abdi Farah.

Interim parliament speaker, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adam, and interim interior minister, Hussein Mohammed Aideed, may send a 20-man delegation, according to Farah. The possible move is the outcome of Somalia’s president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s fresh attemps in recent days to resume dialogue with the Islamic courts. This followed a number of highly critical statements from the country’s Islamists, but also from members of the interim government, questioning the solidity of an accord signed by both parties on 22 June in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, agreeing to halt military and media hostilities.

The final decision will be taken on Wednesday, when Ahmed returns to Somalia from the African Union summit in Bajul, capital of the Gambia. Yusuf wants foreign peacekeepers to be deployed in Somalia, which has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. This idea is fiercely opposed by the Union of Islamic Courts. Regional diplomats are holding talks with the interim government at their base in the southern provincial town of Baidoa, 200 kilometres from Mogadishu.

In an audio recording posted to an Islamist website over the weekend, al-Qaeda’s leader, Osma bin Laden warned Western nations not to send troops to Somalia and urged Somalis to back the newly powerful Islamists and fight Ahmed and his allies, warning that offering any support to Yusuf or international forces would turn Muslims into "infidels."

Somalia’s parliament approved the deployment of foreign peacekeepers earlier this month. Troops from Uganda and Sudan would come first, followed by those from bordering states, including Somalia’s traditional rival, Ethiopia.