Somali delegates to a peace conference in Nairobi have endorsed a transitional federal charter under which the strife-torn country will be governed when a final peace accord is reached, mediators said on Tuesday.
The charter was immediately rejected by key figures who shunned the talks in the Kenyan capital, including the head of the Horn of Africa country’s interim administration and prominent faction leaders.
Parts of the charter had been agreed in July at the conference, which has been going on in Nairobi since October last year, but several issues remained unresolved, including the status of existing regional administrations, the role of religion and the country’s official languages.
”The contentious elements have now been settled,” said conference spokesperson Mohamed Abdullahi.
Under the charter, endorsed on Monday evening, factions are to form an interim federal government for Somalia, which has been ruled by rival warlords and has not had a recognised government since the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in January 1991.
But Somalia’s transitional national government led by president Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, who walked out of the peace talks in July after accusing mediators and other Somali delegates of sanctioning the ”dismemberment” of Somalia, held its ground.
”The conference is totally dead and there is no hope of continuing the dialogue,” Abdurahman Mohamed Ibi, the transitional Information Minister, said in Nairobi.
Salat’s transitional national government controls only tiny pockets in Mogadishu and several small areas in the south.
Key faction leaders Osman Hassan Ali ”Atto”, Mohamud Hussein Addow, Jama Ali Jama, Musa Sudi Yalahow and Barre Hirale also rejected the transitional federal charter.
”The conference is dead, it has been killed by the organisers and we are thinking of having our own conference inside Somalia,” Yalahow told reporters in the Somali capital Mogadishu. — Sapa-AFP