Somalia’s interim government agreed on Tuesday to attend new peace talks with the country’s powerful Islamists, responding to a United Nations drive to avoid war in the Horn of Africa country.
”We will go to Khartoum without any preconditions,” said Abdirizak Adam, interim President Abdullahi Yusuf’s chief of staff, after talks with a senior UN envoy in the government’s base in the provincial town of Baidoa.
But there was no immediate word from the newly powerful Islamists on whether they would attend the planned talks in Khartoum on August 1 and August 2.
The Islamists captured Mogadishu from United States-backed warlords in June and now control a large swathe of southern Somalia.
UN special Somalia envoy Francois Lonseny Fall was expected to move to Mogadishu after meeting the interim government to try to persuade the Islamists to attend the talks.
Talks to prevent a stand-off between the two sides from spiralling into war broke down on July 22, when the Islamists pulled out because of a reported incursion into Somalia by Ethiopian troops to defend the fragile interim government.
A previous round of negotiations was boycotted by the government, which accused the Islamists of breaking an agreement to stop military operations.
Fall’s visit came a day after the African Union urged the UN Security Council to speed up plans to ease an arms embargo on Somalia to allow foreign peacekeepers to deploy.
The appeal followed an agreement by the AU and the East African regional body Igad (Inter-governmental Authority on Development) to send troops to help secure peace in Somalia.
The plan has been repeatedly rejected by the Islamists.
”The AU Peace and Security Council appeals to the UN Security Council to expedite the exemption of the arms embargo on Somalia,” AU Peace and Security commissioner Said Djinnit said late on Monday.
He told reporters the AU was concerned about the ”continued fragility” of Somalia’s peace process, and urged both parties to resume dialogue.
The Security Council says it is willing to consider a long-delayed deployment of foreign peacekeepers. In a July 13 statement, it also expressed a readiness to ease the arms ban to allow Somalia’s government to develop its own security forces.
Meanwhile, Islamist sources in Mogadishu said more than 40 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy arms left the capital late on Monday to bolster allies fearing attack from government forces in central Somalia. — Reuters