Somali president makes first official trip to Mogadishu
Source: Reuters
(Adds African Union, EU recommendations) By Guled Mohamed MOGADISHU, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf entered Mogadishu on Monday, capping a remarkable turn-around in the capital Islamists ruled for six months until they were ousted before the New Year. As Yusuf entered the city for the first time since taking office in 2004, protected by his soldiers and Ethiopian troops who helped rout the Islamists, he ruled out talks with his foes. "With regard to holding talks with the courts, this will not happen," Yusuf told Al Jazeera television in an interview before flying to Mogadishu. "We will crack down on the terrorists in any place around the nation." In the southern tip of Somalia, Ethiopian jets and soldiers attacked the remnants of the Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC) with jets, part of a campaign to finish off the hardcore Islamist fighters who have vowed to fight on. Mogadishu is the official capital of Somalia, but the government had been unable to install itself there first because of warlords in the government who opposed giving up their turf, and later because of the Islamists. It had been forced to stay in outlying Somali towns, most recently in the south-central agricultural trading town of Baidoa -- the only area it had controlled until the two-week war that drove out the Islamists on Dec. 28. "The president has arrived. He is now in Villa Somalia," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said. "He urged all Somalis to forget the past and prepare to build their country and support the interim government." The bullet-scarred Villa Somalia compound is the former palace of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, whose 1991 ouster as Somalia's last national president in 1991 triggered more than 15 years of anarchy. NEW PEACEKEEPERS The Ethiopians are expected to pull out of Somalia in a matter of weeks, while an African peacekeeping force is cobbled together to fill the anticipated vacuum in security, which the government admits it cannot handle on its own. In Addis Ababa, the African Union's Peace and Security Council agreed to increase the number of troops to be deployed to Somalia from a proposed 8,000-strong deployment and an official said the AU would meet again to decide on how many. "The Security Council underlined the need for an urgent deployment of peace support mission to Somalia," Said Djinnit, the AU's peace and security commissioner said. "The Council also stressed the need for an all-inclusive political process as called for in (the Somalia) charter." He said the meeting had called on the international community to fund the peace mission. Somalia's ambassador to the AU, Abdikarim Farah, said the deployment of peacekeepers would require $150 million for the first six months. Uganda has already agreed to send troops, but parliament must approve it and it is not due to be in session until the end of the month. Diplomats say South Africa and Nigeria have made murmurs of contributing troops. Farah declined to name the other countries.The United States on Friday said it was contributing $16 million and the European Union has said it would contribute funding. EU aid Commissioner Louis Michel said in Brussels: "But first of all we want to know which kind, which troops, how many people, which mandate, and so on." NEW FIGHTING With Ethiopian troops doing most of the heavy lifting, the government has pushed the SICC to the southern tip of Somalia, near the Kenyan border. Witnesses said Ethiopian and Somali troops continued their pursuit on Monday. "The warplanes this morning struck at a location 18 km (11 miles) from Afmadow where Islamic troops are hiding. So many Ethiopian and government troops driving dozens of military trucks passed there today," resident Hassan Mursal told Reuters. Defence Minister Barre Aden Shire "Barre Hirale" declined to comment on that and reports a group of Islamists had been cornered at a jungle hideout near the Kenyan border, which has been sealed and trapped thousands of refugees on the other side. The United States, Ethiopia and Yusuf have all accused the Islamists of links to al Qaeda, which they have denied. Some of the Islamists have surfaced in Yemen and say they are willing to hold peace talks with the government, but Yusuf on Monday ruled that out. The United States and the EU have stressed dialogue in resolving Somalia's crisis. Yusuf was in Mogadishu in 1994 but in recent years had stayed out of the capital, where he is an outsider and still has many enemies from his time as warlord based in the semi-autonomous northern Puntland region. (Additional reporting by Sahra Abdi Ahmed in Kismayu, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Tim Cocks in Kampala and Ingrid Melander in Brussels)
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