Friday, October 05, 2007
Ngoma Ngime said he had held talks with President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who supported the latest initiative, but was yet to meet the opposition groups including the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS).
"We are facilitating negotiation between the Somali Transitional Federal government and those opposing the institution," Ngime told a press conference in Mogadishu.
"The meditation effort will involve those who are fighting the government inside the country and opposition groups that are based in Asmara," the capital of neighbouring Eritrea, he explained.
"Our initiative is serious as really need peace in Somalia," Ngime added said, referring to a nation of 10 million people where numerous UN-backed peace efforts have unravelled under a welter of clan feuds and power struggles.
Insurgents armed with pistols have meanwhile killed five people, including two government prosecutors, in Mogadishu's volatile Bakara district, police and witnesses said.
"At least five people were killed in Bakara," a government official told AFP.
Of the five fatalities, "two of the killed were working in the office of the prosecutor general."
"After the killings, dozens of police officers arrived at the scene and sealed it off," said Hassan Ibrahim, a trader who witnessed the incident.
A pro-insurgency website -- heegan.net -- claimed responsibility for the attack.
The ARS members, who include an Islamist movement ousted from south and central Somalia early this year by government fighters with Ethiopian military support, have vowed never to enter into dialogue until Addis Ababa withdraws its troops.
The Islamists are waging a deadly insurgency in Mogadishu, a seaside capital that has been convulsed by near daily attacks that target government officials, Ethiopian troops and Ugandan peacekeepers, but in which dozens of civilians have been killed or wounded.
Uganda, which has deployed a vanguard force of at least 1,500 peacekeepers to the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), has also pledged to help train a Somali police force.
Other African nations are yet to contribute troops to reach 8,000 that AU had pledged to deploy in Somalia to help President Yusuf tighten his tenuous grip across the country.
A government-sponsored reconciliation conference ended in Mogadishu in August in failure, prompting foreign diplomats to press for a new and all-inclusive approach to rescue Somalia from deeper turmoil.
The opposition groups boycotted the Mogadishu talks and followed up with their own meeting in Asmara, where they formed a coalition to fight Ethiopian forces.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a deadly clan-based power struggle that has defied numerous efforts to restore stability.
Source: AFP, Oct 05, 2007