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Somalia Peace Talks Run Into Fresh Trouble
By William Maclean
NAIROBI, Oct. 2 (Reuters) — Somali peace talks were in fresh disarray on Thursday after a group of powerful warlords walked out and set up a rival gathering, compounding the woes of a conference already beset by quarrels among regional powers.
Diplomats at the year-old talks in Kenya said they were running out of options as they strove to heal the rifts plaguing efforts to end years of bloodshed in the Horn of Africa country.
"It looks like we're at the point where we need to think of a fresh approach,'' one of the diplomats said on Thursday.
The conference was hit by an earlier walkout by the head of a defunct interim government in mid-September and last week Djibouti, a key player in Somali affairs, said it would withdraw as one of the regional mediators.
Diplomats say both moves were linked to a deepening rift between Ethiopia, the key power in the Horn and a traditional foe of Somalia's, and Arab states like Egypt that are wary of Ethiopian influence in a country they see as one of their own.
On Tuesday 12 southern Somali political groups including two of Mogadishu's toughest warlords said they had quit the Kenya talks to set up the Somali Salvation National Alliance, explaining this group would organise a rival peace conference.
Participants include Muse Sudi Yalahow and Osman Ali Atto, two of the capital's most powerful militia leaders, and the Juba Valley Alliance group that controls the southern Kismayo port.
Several members of the group have in the past expressed disquiet at what they see as Ethiopian attempts to dominate the Kenya talks and any new Somali administration it produces.
Muse Sudi, the leader of the new group, said it would try to forge an alliance with Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, the leader of a defunct transitional government who frequently accuses Ethiopia of interfering in the talks. Ethiopia denies the charge.
Muse Sudi also said the new alliance would try to set up a new administration in lawless Mogadishu, the most heavily armed part of the country and a patchwork of rival militia fiefdoms.
Abdiqassim walked out of the talks in Kenya in mid-September saying he was angered by a decision by delegates and mediators to approve a transitional constitution without involving him and other faction leaders.
The 40-page charter sets a four-year term for the transitional government to shepherd the country to elections.
Somalia has been torn by war since the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991 and since then conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Observers in Somalia say Muse Sudi's new alliance appears aimed at wresting control of all the fertile regions of the south, traditionally areas of clan competition for power.
"We ask people to come to Somalia for the national reconciliation conference we are preparing. We will welcome them with cheers," Muse Sudi told Reuters in Somalia. ''Those who cannot come to the country have no right to lead the people.''
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