Monday, June 19, 2006
Xinhua
The top United Nations envoy to Somalia stressed Monday that it is crucial to open a legitimate dialogue between the Somalian transitional government and Islamic Courts militias, which now control the country’s three major districts, including the capital Mogadishu.
“If something is not done now, the conflict might take on a regional dimension,” Francois Lonseny Fall, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative, told reporters after briefing the Security Council on his recent trip to the region.
Any dialogue with the Union of Islamic Courts, which earlier this month drove warlords out of the capital, Mogadishu, must be done under the framework of the transitional Charter, he said.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since the collapse of President Muhammad Siad Barre’s regime in 1991.
Fall said that even given its long history as a “failed state,” Somalia was receiving stronger Security Council attention at the current time because progress in building those transitional institutions could now be erased, and it is very possible that there are extremist elements among the Islamic Court leaders, though very little is known about them.
He also pointed to the danger of regional destabilization, saying that there have already been unconfirmed indications of Ethiopian troop movements toward the Somali border.
Compounding this, humanitarian agencies are facing increasing difficulties in gaining access to people in the areas now controlled by the Islamic Courts. Fall said that a meeting between an international humanitarian team and leaders of the Islamic courts was in the process of being arranged, representing the first diplomatic contacts with any of them.
Source: Xinhua, June 19, 2006
