Mogadishu, Sept 5, 2006 – Anarchic Somalia lurched towards long-elusive stability on Tuesday after an interim accord between powerful Islamists and the weak government, but plans for regional peacekeepers appeared in tatters.

As Islamist and government leaders savored their less than 24-hour-old deal, reached at Arab League-mediated talks in Sudan, East African leaders hastily cancelled a summit in Kenya called to discuss the proposed force.

And in Mogadishu, thousands of Muslims rallied against the mission, vowing that Somalia would become a "graveyard" for any soldiers sent by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad).

About 7   000 demonstrators gathered in the capital to denounce any deployment of Igad peacekeepers, which had been requested by the transitional government and endorsed by the African Union but vehemently opposed by the Islamists.

"We will not accept foreign troops in Somalia," they yelled in the rally called by the city's Islamic courts. "We shall fight against Igad troops."

"If they forcefully deploy, graveyards of the Igad troops will litter Somalia," said senior cleric Sheikh Omar Iman Abubakar of the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

"We will never allow a single soldier from a foreign country into our country," he told the angry crowd. "We will fight against them until death."

Igad, which groups Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan and nominally Somalia, has had much-postponed plans to deploy about 8   000 soldiers to support the Somali government.

But the mission has split the bloc, notably with arch-foes Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are accused of supporting the rival Somali sides, taking opposite positions: Addis Ababa in favor and Asmara opposed.

And the accord signed late on Monday in Khartoum between the administration and the newly dominant Islamists calls for the formation of a unified national army and police force and denounces all foreign interference in Somalia.

The deal, which calls for power-sharing talks to begin at the end of October, made no mention of the peacekeeping mission but appeared to take Igad leaders by surprise as they prepared to meet in Nairobi.

Only three heads of state or government turned up -- host President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Somalia's interim president Abdillahi Yusuf Mohamed.

The planned summit was then hastily transformed into a closed-door meeting on how to deal with the new developments, according to Kenyan officials who spent two days in talks with the Islamists preparing for the gathering.

But those talks ended with no change in the Islamists' vehement opposition to the Igad force, which had been actively supported by the government, at least until the Khartoum agreement.

At the Mogadishu rally, the Islamists vowed to mobilize to fight any foreign troops sent to Somalia, which has been wracked by chaos since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre.

"The Igad meeting in Nairobi is a conspiracy against the Islamic State of Somalia," said Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, head of the SICS executive committee, who had traveled to the Kenyan capital to speak with officials there.

"We are planning to implement the Khartoum agreement, but any foul play by the Igad leaders risks pushing these agreements into ruins," he told the demonstration.

The four-point accord commits both sides to a previous mutual recognition and truce pact, which they have accused each other of violating, and bars them from seeking military aid from neighboring states.

They also agreed to begin talks on power-sharing on October 30 at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, to cement the principles of the deal intended to prevent the Horn of Africa nation from plunging into further chaos.

The rise of the Islamists, who seized Mogadishu in June, poses a serious challenge to the transitional government.

Since taking the capital the Islamists have expanded their control over much of southern Somalia, fuelling fears of a Taliban-style takeover by imposing strict sharia law.

Meanwhile, the transitional government, the latest in a series of more than a dozen international attempts to restore stability, has been riddled with infighting and unable to assert authority.

Source: AFP

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