Tuesday, January 23, 2007
NAIROBI (AFP) - A senior US official is to meet a top member of Somalia's ousted Islamist movement to urge the faction not to pursue a campaign of violence, the US embassy in Kenya has said.
US ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger plans to see Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed this week in Nairobi, possibly as early as Tuesday, after his weekend surrender to Kenyan authorities, the embassy said.
"The ambassador will urge Sheikh Sharif to counsel his supporters not to carry out violence and to support the development of an inclusive government," embassy spokesman Jennifer Barnes told AFP Tuesday.
"Sheikh Sharif now has an opportunity as an individual to demonstrate his willingness to work towards a positive and long-term solution in Somalia by urging his supporters to eschew violence and extremism," she said.
The venue for the meeting was not yet determined but Ahmed, who turned himself over to Kenyan officials on Sunday at a border crossing point, remains under Kenyan protection at an upscale Nairobi hotel, Barnes said.
Meanwhile, the Kenyan government, which had remained silent for two days about Ahmed's presence in the country, belatedly confirmed he was in police custody.
"The government of Kenya confirms that Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed of the Islamic Courts Union is in Kenya under police custody," spokesman Alfred Mutua said in a statement. "The police are talking to him."
Ahmed, head of the executive wing of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia, is the most senior member of the movement to have turned himself in after its recent ouster by Ethiopian and Somali government forces.
Diplomats say they hope Ahmed, widely seen as a moderate in the vanquished hardline regime that seized Mogadishu in June and held it for six months, could be a useful element in pulling fractious Somali factions together.
The United States, which backed Ethiopia's late December intervention in Somalia and then launched an air strike at suspected Al-Qaeda operatives there, had already said it believed Ahmed could be a worthy interlocutor.
Ranneberger, whose brief includes Somalia, met with Ahmed, initially the Islamists' top leader, in Nairobi last year after US-backed warlords fled Mogadishu in a bid to press moderation on the then-powerful movement.
But soon after the capital fell, Ahmed was demoted to the executive arm, paving the way for Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a firebrand cleric designated a terrorist by the United States, to take over as the movement's supreme leader.
The Islamists then began to institute strict Sharia law in areas they controlled, sparking fears of a Taliban-style takeover of Somalia and threatening the largely powerless Somali transitional government.
Source: AFP, Jan 23, 2007