Clan leaves Somali peace talks
14/07/2004 14:14  - (SA)  

Regional pres reduces term Somali leaders talk peace

Nairobi - A major clan involved in Somali peace talks on Tuesday withdrew from a convoluted process aimed at restoring a functional government in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

The Dir clan's delegates have withdrawn because the mediators "have deliberately paralysed the decision-making capacities of the clan... thus disenabling us from continuing this critical phase of the conference," the clan's leaders said in a statement issued in Nairobi, where the talks are taking place.

The Dir, one of four major clans in Somalia, said that its warlords had also pulled out.

The clan has been accused by Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) mediators of trying to dominant the talks, which were launched in October 2002 and are on their final phase.

There has been no national governing authority in Somalia since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted.

Then followed 13 years of factional bloodletting that turned Somalia into the archetypal "failed state" and prompted botched military and humanitarian intervention by the United Nations and the United States in the early 1990s.

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