Somalia has best chance for peace in years - UN
Source: Reuters
(adds Islamist report of U.S. prisoners, Ethiopian comment) By Daniel Wallis MOGADISHU, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The top U.N. envoy to Somalia, making his first visit since a war last month, said on Thursday the Horn of Africa nation now had its best chance to end 16 years of anarchy and bloodshed. Francois Lonseny Fall, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general, flew into Mogadishu two weeks after Ethiopian and Somali government troops swept aside Islamists who had run most of southern Somalia for six months. "This is the best opportunity for peace for 16 years in Somalia and we must not waste it," Fall said after meeting interim President Abdullahi Yusuf at the bullet and shell-marked presidential palace, Villa Somalia. "I want to congratulate you. To see the president in Villa Somalia is a very important step," he told Yusuf, who came to the capital last week for the first time since being appointed in 2004 after peace talks in Kenya. The white-washed, hilltop compound was the seat of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, whose 1991 overthrow plunged the country into years of violence, chaos and poverty. Escorted by a mix of U.N. guards and Somali government forces wielding AK-47s, Fall urged Yusuf, other government leaders and civil society groups to reach out to opponents and build an all-inclusive administration to avoid further conflict. "There has been a lot of crime, a lot of devastation, but if you look back and say 'this man killed my son or husband' you will never be reconciled in this country," Fall said. "We should leave the judgement to God. Only Allah can judge everybody." Ethiopia is eager to pull out its troops and there is wide concern about a vacuum unless African peacekeepers can be brought in to safeguard stability and protect the government. The United Nations has endorsed such a force in principle, but so far only Uganda has publicly pledged to contribute troops and other nations are wary of the risks. Until the war, the government was confined to the southern town of Baidoa and in danger of being overrun by a militant Islamist movement born out of sharia courts in Mogadishu. "NO MORE WARLORDS" Now installed in the coastal capital, it faces a mammoth task to pacify one of the world's most lawless and gun-infested states. As well as the threat of guerrilla strikes from surviving Islamist forces, the government needs to reconcile feuding clans and keep in check a host of former warlords. "The will of the international community and of the U.N. is to see a reconciled Somalia. The road is still long and we still have a lot to do," Fall, a soft-speaking former prime minister of Guinea, told Yusuf. "We don't want any more warlords in Somalia. We will not tolerate that. We want a government." Yusuf, a 72-year-old former soldier, urged his visitor to relocate the U.N. offices for Somalia from Nairobi to Mogadishu, and insisted his government was already engaged in dialogue. "As you can see, reconciliation is going on. We are meeting all the faction leaders," Yusuf told Fall, introducing him to grey-bearded warlord Said Hersi, known as General Morgan. "Today we are disarming them and I think everyone is very happy now." Wednesday's ouster of the pro-Islamist speaker of parliament was seen by some analysts, however, as a sign the government is keener to exact revenge and concentrate its power than to create a genuinely all-inclusive administration. The Islamists, defeated by superior Ethiopian armour in the one-sided two-week war, have fled to Somalia's remote southern tip near the Kenyan border. Some have been picked up in Kenya. A government spokesman said the Kenyan authorities were holding "a number of people", but gave no details. Nairobi has sought to seal the border, but that has left some 4,000 would-be refugees stranded in dire conditions. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's Defence Minister Kuma Demeksa said his forces were engaged in mopping-up operations targeting "terrorist remnants hiding in the bushes". They would withdraw as soon as peacekeepers were deployed, he told reporters. In Washington, a defence official, on condition of anonymity, denied an Islamist Web site report Islamist fighters had caught 10 U.S. soldiers, one of whom died of malaria. Rumours have swirled that some U.S. troops entered the south to pursue fugitive Islamists and al Qaeda suspects around the time of a Jan. 8 U.S. air strike. But there has been no confirmation of that. No U.S. service members had been captured or killed in southern Somalia, the defence official told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Kristen Roberts in Washington and Bosire Nyairo in Nairobi)
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