By Ali Musa Abdi

NAIROBI , Oct 19, 2006 – Scrambling to save Somalia from deeper turmoil, a US-backed international panel on Thursday opened talks aimed at convincing the weak government and powerful Islamists to participate in faltering peace talks aimed at restoring peace in the shattered African nation.

Diplomats from the 11 members of the International Contact Group on Somalia met at a hotel outside the capital in a closed-door session aimed at urging the Somali foes to go ahead with a third round of talks in Sudan at the end of the month, officials said.

The group is expected to meet Somalia's transitional President Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed and Ibrahim Hassan Addow, the foreign affairs coordinator for the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), they said.

"The group is discussing ways of advancing Somali peace talks," said one European envoy attending the meeting, which came as tensions soared between the government and the increasingly dominant Islamists.

"We shall give them a clear message. The message is that you have to choose peace talks in order to stop the crisis in Somalia. The solution to Somali problem in to get an agreement through peaceful means," he added.

The talks are being attended by Washington's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who has been in the forefront of bids to convince regional countries to help solve the Somali problem that threatens to destabilize the whole region.

Others included representatives from Contact Group members -- the United Nations, European Union, African Union, Arab League, the regional east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, Britain, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Tanzania.

The one-day meeting, chaired by Sweden and Norway, comes amid growing uncertainty over prospects for the next round of Arab-mediated peace talks between the government and the Islamists set for October 30 in Khartoum.

The besieged government, which controls only a pocket of the country around its temporary seat of Baidoa, has threatened to boycott the Khartoum talks, accusing the Arab League of bias toward the Islamists, who have allegedly violated previous agreements.

And the Islamists have also threatened to boycott unless the international community presses Ethiopia to withdraw troops it has allegedly sent to Somalia to prop up Yusuf's administration.

Both the government and Addis Ababa have denied the deployment of Ethiopian troops on Somali territory despite persistent eyewitness accounts of their presence in the country. Ethiopian officials have made it clear that they will not stand by if the Islamists, whom it calls Jihadists, advance towards Baidoa.

Two previous rounds of talks in Khartoum in June and September resulted in interim accords, notably on mutual recognition and ceasefire, between the two sides that both sides claim are being violated by the other.

The government has repeatedly accused the Islamists of violating the pacts by continuing to expand their territory, which now includes almost all of central and southern Somalia, where they have imposed strict Sharia law.

Late September, the Islamists took the key southern port of Kismayo from a government-allied local militia, a move they said was intended to block the arrival there of foreign peacekeepers the government has appealed for.

That move, coupled with fears of wider conflict and drought, caused a huge surge in the number of Somalis fleeing into neighboring Kenya, overwhelming already strained resources at refugee camps.

The United Nations, which has appealed for 35 million dollars in emergency aid for its Somali operations in Kenya, says at least 30,000 Somalis have fled since January and that the total could rise to 50,000 by year's end.

Somalia has lacked an effective government since dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre was toppled in 1991. The government formed in Kenya in 2004 has been wracked by infighting and failed to exert its control across the splintered nation of 10 million.

Source: AFP