By Guled Mohamed
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
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MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A twice-postponed reconciliation conference seen as key to establishing peace in Somalia will begin on Sunday, officials said, with European envoys joining more than 1,000 local delegates.
Abdirahman Mohamed Jimale, spokesman for the conference organisers, said an insurgency blamed on hardline Islamists would not stop the meeting, which aims to draw 1,355 clan leaders, ex-warlords and politicians from across the country.
"The conference is definitely on," Jimale told Reuters on Wednesday. "The insecurity will not stop it from starting. We appeal to the Somali people to forget their past and come together to build a new Somalia."
At the conference venue -- a bullet-pocked police compound -- dozens of workers swarmed across the site, repairing the roof, erecting walls and installing new windows.
A group of European Union diplomats led by EU Special Envoy to Somalia Georges-Marc Andre visited the chaotic Somali capital on Wednesday and were invited to return for Sunday's meeting.
"We received good answers and we are going back happy," Italy's Special Envoy to Somalia Mario Raffaelli told reporters on behalf of the group after meeting senior interim government officials and the conference organisers.
"We received the invitation ... We will be back on Sunday."
CLAN CONCERNS
Somalia's interim government has been struggling to stamp its authority on Mogadishu since ousting the Islamists with the help of Ethiopia's military in a brief war over the New Year.
An Islamist-led insurgency has rumbled on since then, triggering two bouts of heavy fighting with Ethiopian troops that killed at least 1,300 people and uprooted 400,000 more.
The EU delegation met leaders of the city's dominant Hawiye clan, whose militia are blamed along with the Islamists for a wave of near-daily guerrilla attacks in Mogadishu targeting government troops and their Ethiopian military allies.
"They have arguments but these arguments are not definite arguments. They have to be looked at in the context of a dialogue," Andre said, referring to the Hawiye's disputes with the interim government of President Abdullahi Yusuf.
Some Hawiye elders had refused to attend the conference when it was initially scheduled for mid-April, and then mid-June. Both times it was postponed due to security fears.
Nairobi-based diplomats following Somalia say the expect Sunday's start to be little more than a formal opening, to buy more time to organise the meeting and get delegates there.
"I think they'll find some sort of mechanism to launch it before recessing immediately," said one Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"I'd be very surprised if they'd dare admit it wouldn't start, because if it doesn't, it will be finished."
Some opponents of Yusuf's administration have based themselves in Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea, where they released a statement on Wednesday saying they would hold a separate meeting there on Sept. 1 to discuss how to "liberate" their country.
"The constituent congress will form a coalition with the aim of liberating Somalia from the yoke of the Ethiopian occupation and their collaborators," the statement said.
"The country is under foreign occupation and there is no legitimate government, and law and order are non-existent ... it is meaningless to talk about holding tribal conferences in Mogadishu." (Additional reporting by Jack Kimball in Asmara and Bryson Hull in Nairobi)
Source: Reuters, July 11, 2007