BBC NEWS
Monday, July 03, 2006
A two-member United Nations security team has arrived in the Somali capital to hold talks with Islamist leaders.
Earlier one of the defeated warlords surrendered, with some 100 fighters and nine armed pick-up trucks.
Omar Finish was one of the key members of the defeated warlord alliance and had been holed up in north Mogadishu, after his comrades had fled the city.
“The team wants to check security in the capital before UN agencies can resume their work here,” Abdirahim Isse, a close aide to senior Islamic leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, told Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, the prime minister of the weak interim government has told Osama bin Laden not to interfere in Somalia.
The US fears that the Islamists could provide a new base for al-Qaeda.
Somalis, weary after 15 years without an effective national government, are worried about a possible new conflict between Islamist and secular forces in their country.
‘Enemy number one’
Regional diplomats are heading for Somalia on Monday for talks with the government in their base of Baidoa, 200km form Mogadishu.
It was not clear whether the team from East Africa’s Igad body and the African Union will also travel to Mogadishu for talks with the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls much of southern Somalia.
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Igad has agreed to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia – but only when it is safe to do so.
The government of President Abdullahi Yusuf wants foreign peacekeepers to be deployed – an idea fiercely rejected by the Union of Islamic Courts.
At a summit in The Gambia, African Union leaders agreed to support Somali’s government.
In an internet audio recording attributed to Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader warned the west not to send troops to Somalia.
Mr Ahmed dismissed having any links to al-Qaeda and again said that Ethiopian troops had already been sent to Somalia and were in the government’s seat of Baidoa, 200km from Mogadishu.
He urged Somalis to unite against “the enemy number one of the Somali people”, apparently referring to Ethiopia.
Prime Minister Ghedi, however, again strongly denied the claims – as Ethiopia has done in the past.
Mr Ghedi also urged any foreign militants in Somalia to leave the country.
Mr Finish was religious affairs ministers in the government until he was sacked for his role in the Mogadishu battle.
He has promised to set up a new Islamic court in the Madina district he used to control.
Source: BBC NEWS, July 3, 2006
