Sunday, July 30, 2006
Reuters
Somalia’s top Islamist leader ruled out on Sunday attending peace talks in Sudan with the interim government until the departure of Ethiopian troops believed to have crossed into the Horn of Africa nation.
“As long as they are in our country we will not attend the talks,” Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said by phone.
Witnesses say hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers have entered Somalia to protect the government, which is based in the provincial town of Baidoa, against expansion by the Islamists, who took Mogadishu and other southern towns last month.
“We don’t care whether it’s a single soldier or a whole battalion as long as the Ethiopian troops are in our country. We don’t want them in, they should get out,” Aweys said.
The hardline cleric, who is on U.S. and U.N. lists of people with “terrorism” links, was giving the Islamists’ first public reaction to Sunday’s failed bid by some lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi in a no confidence vote.
Some had cast the attempted ouster of Gedi as a bid to create space for the Islamists to enter government in a power-sharing agreement.
Such a deal is seen by many as the only way to avoid conflict in Somalia, but the Islamists never said if they were interested.
“The talks are not subject to either the government losing or winning but the presence of Ethiopian troops in our country,” Aweyes added, referring to efforts to bring both sides to a second round of talks in Khartoum in early August.
Source: Reuters, July 30, 2006
