Washington, June 13 (Reuters) – The United States will host an international meeting on Thursday in New York to discuss Somalia and how to support its interim government after Islamists took over the capital Mogadishu last week.
State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the United Nations, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Italy and Tanzania had agreed so far to attend the first meeting of the so-called Somalia Contact Group and other countries might join the discussions.
We will be “talking about how the international community and, in particular, these countries might coordinate their policies, might bring together their political, diplomatic and perhaps other resources to try to help support the transitional federal institutions in Somalia,” said McCormack.
Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 and an interim government established in late 2004 is too weak to enter the capital where militia loyal to Islamic courts seized control a week ago.
The interim government, which has met members of the Islamist side in Mogadishu, has repeatedly said it cannot operate in the lawless country without the help of foreign peacekeepers to provide security to the interim leaders.
But a senior Islamic judicial official warned Somalia’s interim government that talks on the country’s future would be broken off if its parliament invited in foreign peacekeepers.
A State Department official said he had not heard any discussion about the issue of international peacekeepers being on the agenda of Thursday’s New York meeting.
Source: Reuters, June 13, 2006
