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Pressure mounts on Somalia
30/01/2007 21:07 - (SA)
Addis Ababa - Pressure was piled up on Somalia's interim government at an African Union (AU) summit to pursue the path of reconciliation amid warnings on Tuesday that further instability would hold back the wider region.
A top official for the European Union (EU), which has conditioned the release of funds for a Somali peacekeeping force on unity, said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed had agreed to host a conference of the country's fractious clans.
But Yusuf himself declined to confirm the idea of a clear-the-air gathering as he appeared alongside EU development commissioner Louis Michel, saying instead only that the pair had "understood each other".
While Monday's opening of the summit was dominated by the situation in Sudan's western Darfur region, attention turned on the second and final day to Somalia, one of the continent's other major festering trouble spots.
The AU agreed earlier this month to send a force of about 8 000 troops to the Horn of Africa nation which has been the scene of fighting between warlords and their militias for much of the last 16 years.
Talks on the sidelines
But the deployment has been held up as only a handful of countries have agreed to contribute troops, partly due to concerns about finance and of getting bogged down in a country which has been a byword for anarchy.
Yusuf held talks on the sidelines of the summit with both United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as well as Michel.
Michel said that Brussels was now ready to release funds for the force as the president had agreed to host the reconciliation conference.
"I am impressed by his decision to call a conference of reconciliation," Michel said after the meeting, adding the conference "could happen in two or three weeks".
Yusuf cancelled a press briefing and his only comment to reporters after the Michel meeting was that "we fully understood each other and we agreed to work together".
Yusuf's administration, formed in 2004, had been confined to a provincial backwater until late last month when Ethiopia intervened on its behalf and helped oust an Islamist movement from the capital Mogadishu and other towns it held.
The EU made clear earlier this month that it was prepared to contribute $19.5m to the AU peacekeeping force only as long as Yusuf took concrete steps towards reconciliation.
Michel said Yusuf had met the EU's precondition by deciding to convene the reconciliation conference.
Somalia essential to development
"In my opinion, all the conditions are fulfilled" for the EU to now release the funds for the AU force, he said.
Ban also urged Yusuf to reconcile the country's fractious rival factions to turn the page on nearly two decades of bloodshed.
"I urged the Somali leaders to engage in an inclusive political process" including dialogue with moderate Islamists and clan elders, said the UN secretary-general.
Ismail Omar Guelleh, president of Somalia's northern neighbour Djibouti, said instability in Somalia was holding the whole of east Africa back.
The region "has much to gain from a stable Somalia. It is essential to development in the region", he said.
In a speech on Monday to mark the opening of the two-day summit, AU commission chief Alpha Oumar Konare said the interim government should reach out to the Islamists "except those who are fighting and killing for holy war".
Konare and Ban both issued dressing-downs in their summit speeches on Monday to Sudan about aerial bombardments in Darfur before Khartoum suffered further humiliation by being deprived of the chairmanship of the organisation.
- AFP
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