Somali govt urged to go home

2005-01-18 12:03

Mogadishu - Officials in Somalia's capital on Tuesday urged the country's interim government to return home from exile in neighbouring Kenya, saying residents in bullet-scarred Mogadishu were ready to welcome it.

"Mogadishu is peaceful enough and ready to welcome the new Somali government as well as hand over national institutions," governor Abdullahi Firibi told AFP.

Firibi said banditry in the capital, the seat of government under ex-dictator Mohammed Siad Barre until his ouster in 1991, posed an insignificant threat to President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and his team.

"All major faction leaders are in the government and their gunmen who control most of the capital have promised to offer security," Firibi said. "Therefore, I don't predict any more violence at this stage."

Mogadishu mayor Ibrahim Shawe also assured Yusuf of a "soft landing," when he relocates to try and exert authority in the shattered nation, which has been a theatre of anarchic bloodletting since Barre was overthrown.

"Isolated banditry incidents take place in New York, Nairobi or Riyadh, and Mogadishu is the same," he said.

"No major militia force that would sabotage the relocation is here. Most armed men want rehabilitation and demobilisation," Shawe added.

Warlords pledged to back new leader

Mogadishu warlords and clan chieftains, who are represented in a new cabinet named in Nairobi earlier this month, have pledged to back Yusuf when he decides to return home.

Yusuf vowed last week to relocate the government to Somalia as soon as possible in a bid to fill to the 14-year power vacuum in the anarchic Horn of Africa state, but some have balked at returning until security improves.

Since December, more than 100 people have been killed in inter-clan clashes in Somalia.

But on January 6, the African Union announced it had agreed in principle to deploy a peace support mission to Somalia that would help install the transitional government.

Such a mission would be the first international force to enter Somalia since UN and US troops withdrew in 1995 amid escalating unrest.

Yusuf, a member of the Darot clan from Somalia's northeastern region of Puntland, himself is unpopular in Mogadishu, a city controlled by numerous warlords from the rival Hawiye clan.

Animosity between the two clans was fuelled during Barre's regime, himself a Darot, who was a staunch nepotist in his 22 years of iron-fisted rule.

Gunmen in the capital spoke of willingness to show "great loyalty as they are fed up with war."

- AFP