The United Nations special envoy for Somalia on Monday won a pledge from the country’s weak government to patch up an internal rift on how to deal with powerful Islamists, with whom it is on the brink of war.
After talks aimed at reviving efforts to avert all-out conflict, the government said it would reconcile with the maverick Parliament speaker after disassociating itself from a unilateral peace initiative he made to Islamist-held Mogadishu.
The UN envoy, Francois Fall, went to the government’s temporary seat of Baidoa seeking to prevent the collapse of the Somalia’s so-called ”transitional federal institutions”, the government and Parliament.
In an address to lawmakers, Fall welcomed the government’s decision to ask speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden to return to Baidoa from Mogadishu, where he travelled this month in an unauthorised, private initiative to seek peace with the Islamists.
”We welcome the government’s call on the speaker to return to Baidoa to resume his duties,” he said.
Earlier, Fall had told President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi and other officials that the international community was ”very very concerned” a rift between Parliament and the government could fuel war with the Islamists.
”Somalia is facing a very difficult moment. Your strength should be your unity. We want to prevent any action that might irreversibly damage the unity of the institutions,” Fall said.
Gedi, however, said a joint government-Parliament committee had decided to ask Aden to return.
”They [Fall’s delegation] came to us worrying about the unity of the transitional federal institutions. When they have read our unified position, their concerns have been addressed,” Gedi said.
Aden incurred government wrath when he went to Mogadishu to broker a deal with the Islamists after the failure of a third round of peace talks in Khartoum on November 1.
A compromise he reached was rejected by the government, which said the speaker has no authority to negotiate on its behalf with Islamic leaders, some of whom are accused of al-Qaeda ties.
The Khartoum talks broke down when the Islamists refused to meet the government until Ethiopian troops in Somalia to protect it are withdrawn.
Aden’s proposal retains such demands, but drops the Islamists’ rejection of Kenya’s participation as co-mediator with the Arab League.
It was not immediately clear if the decision to invite Aden back to Baidoa indicated a potential change in the government stance on returning to peace talks set to resume in mid-December.
”We didn’t talk about that. We discussed the way forward. There is unanimity and unity [in] the federal institutions,” Gedi told reporters.
”The dialogue between the Islamic courts and the transitional federal government should continue,” Fall said.
Asked about the outcome of the talks, Fall replied: ”It was a very successful meeting. We expressed our concerns and received all the assurances we needed.”
The envoy added that he would meet the Islamists ”as soon as it is possible”.
Gedi said the government would resume talks without Islamist pre-conditions.
Security was tight on Falls’s short drive from the airport to the presidential compound but people in his motorcade saw no indication of the thousands of Ethiopian troops believed to be in and around Baidoa to protect the government.
And on walking to the Parliament, Gedi showed Fall the burnt-out wreckage of several vehicles destroyed in a September 18 suicide attempt to assassinate Yusuf.
The Islamists deny any involvement, but have declared holy war on Ethiopian troops protecting the government.
The Islamists seized Mogadishu from United States-backed warlords in June and have since used the city as a base to take most of southern and central Somalia where they have imposed strict sharia law.
The government controls only Baidoa and a few outlying pockets but is allied with authorities in the semi-autonomous north-eastern enclave of Puntland on which the Islamists are advancing.
A report compiled by experts monitoring a 1992 UN arms embargo said the Somali situation contains ”all of the ingredients for the increasing possibility of a violent, widespread, and protracted military conflict”.
Ethiopia and Eritrea, still at odds over their own 1998 to 2000 border war, have thousands of combat troops in Somalia, according to the report. Both countries deny this, though Addis Ababa acknowledges sending military advisors. — AFP
