Donors ready to rebuild Somalia
2006-08-29 21:24
Stockholm - International donors said on Tuesday they were ready to help rebuild Somalia, but only if the African nation's interim government can agree to share power with Islamists and stop 15 years of fighting.
The Islamists and the Ethiopian-backed interim government were in Khartoum on Tuesday for a second round of talks to take place later this week to try and defuse tensions between the two sides vying for authority in the lawless country.
The Islamists' rapid rise and seizure of a strategic swathe of the Horn of Africa nation including the capital Mogadishu has threatened the internationally backed government's narrow authority.
At Tuesday's gathering in Stockholm of the international contact group on Somalia, representatives said they were ready to hold a formal donors' meeting in Rome, led by Sweden and Italy. Still, they sounded a cautious note.
"It will happen when there is a legitimate and legal transition government to deal with," said Swedish state secretary Annika Soder on the sidelines of the meeting.
Transition government seriously weak
"Unfortunately, our judgement is that there isn't one any longer as the transition institutions, and particularly the transition government, have been seriously weakened and the
Islamic courts in Mogadishu have broad and deep public support."
Soder said the contact group wanted to send "a strong signal for support for the dialogue in Khartoum", which she said was the only obvious path toward solving a problem that many worry could lead to a regional conflict.
She did not give any information on how much money was on the table for reconstruction or how it would be distributed.
But Soder said the contact group, which includes African nations, the United States, Europe, the United Nations and the Arab League, believes any solution would need to involve some kind of power-sharing agreement between the warring sides.
Somalia has been mired in anarchy since 1991 when warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then began fighting each other for control of the nation of 10 million.
This government is the 14th shot at imposing central rule since then, and many fear it could go the way of the others.