By Mohamed Olad Hassan
The talks were expected to be a move toward international acceptance for the militia, which the United States has accused of harbouring al-Qaeda and wanting to impose a Taliban-style theocracy.
“The Islamic group has extreme views which cannot go with the world’s civilised and democratic system,” government minister Isma’il Mohamud Hurre said.
A top official in the Supreme Islamic Courts Council wants the talks to go on as scheduled. “We have never tried to divide the government members, so I wonder why they are constantly interfering with us,” Sheikh Mohamud Sheikh Ibrahim Suley said.
The talks were set for Saturday in Khartoum, Sudan, under the auspices of the Arab League. Hurre, the minister for regional cooperation, said Somalia’s president and prime minister have asked Sudanese officials for a delay.
The Islamic militia wrested Mogadishu from a US-backed secular alliance of warlords last month, bringing weeks of relative calm to a capital that has seen little more than chaos since the last effective central government was toppled in 1991.
The interim government was established with the help of the United Nations but is powerless outside the government’s base in Baidoa, 250km from Mogadishu.
The Supreme Islamic Courts Council has grown increasingly hard-line since seizing Mogadishu and establishing strict courts based on the Quran. The group replaced a moderate who had been its main leader with Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, whom the US has linked to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation. Aweys denies the allegations.
The peace talks were planned before Aweys was appointed to the top post, and the interim government has been saying for weeks that it did not want to negotiate with him.
This Horn of Africa nation has been a particular concern to the United States, which has long feared that Somalia would become a refuge for members al-Qaeda, much like Afghanistan did in the late 1990s.
Source: AP, July 12, 2006
