Thursday, July 06, 2006
By Mohamed Ali Bile
A 20-strong delegation from the African Union (AU), regional body IGAD, Arab League and Europe visited Mogadishu in the latest move by an international community scrambling to react to the power-shift since the Islamists took Mogadishu.
The delegation was seeking support for a controversial plan to send foreign peacekeepers to Somalia.
That is backed by Somalia’s weak, interim government — based in the provincial town of Baidoa — but opposed by the Islamists and denounced by Osama bin Laden as part of a “crusade” against the Muslim world.
“We don’t want foreign troops in our country,” a senior Islamic leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, said in Mogadishu.
“We will give a chance to peace and we are ready to play our role in the effort of realising peace in Somalia.”
The mission — which had met with the government at its base in Baidoa on Wednesday — held talks with Islamist leaders, local businessmen and civic groups, witnesses said.
“We have come for peace. It is only the Somalis who can help themselves,” said Kenya’s ambassador to Somalia, Mohamed Affey.
“We are ready to support Somalia. But you should know that this is the last opportunity for Somalis to patch up.”
At the weekend, the AU agreed on the long-discussed dispatch of troops to Somalia, which descended into lawlessness after warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
MILITIA JAILED
The international community and African neighbours are trying to prevent confrontation between the government and Islamists, who now control a strategic southern swathe of Somalia after defeating U.S.-backed warlords last month.
The appointment of hardline cleric Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys — viewed by the United States and United Nations as having links to terrorism — has raised alarm in the West.
Aweys wants to see a government based on Islamic law. That puts him at odds with the interim administration, which is backed by the West and founded on a secular charter.
Aweys said on Thursday Islamic militiamen who shot dead two people wanting to see the World Cup had been jailed.
In the latest sign of a radical tendency within the movement, the militia shot a cinema owner and a girl during a protest against a ban on watching a World Cup match in the central town of Dusa Mareb, Aweys’ home area.
“Those who killed the two civilians will face sharia law as soon as possible,” Aweys told local HornAfrik radio.
There have been other reports of militia from the Islamic sharia courts — out of which the movement grew — stopping viewings of the World Cup, provoking protests.
Underlining insecurity around the country, residents in drought-hit south Somalia near the border with Kenya said three militiamen died when a U.N. World Food Programme convoy carrying food aid was attacked during a tribal conflict.
Despite that, some aid agencies said they were sending back foreign staff to the Islamist-controlled southern town of Jowhar after pulling them out during fighting with warlords last month.
Source: Reuters, July 6, 2006
