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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Somali gov't representatives and a number of opposition figures have formally signed a UN-sponsored peace deal in Djibouti.
The pact between the Eritrea-based opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation
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| Ethiopian troops drive around Mogadishu. |
It also condemned 'the perpetrators as well as those who mastermind and fund violence which targets innocent people, including killings, indiscriminate shelling, looting, raping and acts of piracy'.
The agreement, however, has failed to generate much enthusiasm, with people being skeptical that it would stop Ethiopians from killing Somalis, Press TV correspondent reported.
A senior leader of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, also rejected the peace deal.
The ARS and the Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein had inked an initial accord in early June in Djibouti, calling for the termination of all acts of armed confrontation for a period of 90 days.
The agreement also called on the United Nations to facilitate the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces by deploying its peacekeepers to Somalia.
The US-backed Ethiopian troops have long been criticized for indiscriminate killings and some of the worst human rights violations in Somalia.
Amnesty International said in May that it obtained scores of reports of killings by Ethiopian troops that Somalis have described as "slaughtering like goats".
According to the rights group, some 6,000 civilians were reported killed and more than 600,000 were forced to flee their homes in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last year.
MT/BGH
SOURCE: PressTV, August 19, 2008