President Abdullahi Yusuf

London, 22 February, 2007 - A broad-based national reconciliation conference will open soon in Somalia as a step towards bringing peace and democracy to the troubled Horn of Africa country, the Somali president said Thursday.

In a speech here, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf said he was willing to include in discussions moderate members of a militant Islamic movement that his forces, with the help of Ethiopian soldiers, pushed out of the Somali capital late last year.

But he appeared skeptical that members of the movement could meet his criteria for joining the reconciliation process, including renouncing violence and committing to a democratic future for Somalia.

The Islamic group "was bent on taking political power by force," Yusuf told an audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

"We hear about the moderate elements in the courts," he said. "I say: 'Tell us where they are and we shall seek them and talk to them and try to bring them into the fold of the Somali people.' We will not talk to armed groups who are bent" on destroying peace and security.

A small group of Somali protesters outside the building, and sharp questions from Somali journalists and others inside, testified to the unpopularity of Yusuf's decision to rely on Ethiopia, a traditional rival of Somalia, to oust the Islamic group and to skepticism the former army colonel could lead a reconciliation effort.

Yusuf earlier ruled out talks with Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed Ahmed, described by U.S. and European diplomats as a moderate within the ousted Islamic movement who could contribute to rebuilding Somalia. Yusuf, though, holds Ahmed, now believed to be in Yemen, responsible for Somalia's destruction.

Members of the Islamic group may be drawn into the reconciliation conference through their clans, which were likely to continue to play a major role in Somalia.

Yusuf said Thursday that the reconciliation meeting would start in "coming weeks" in Somalia. A preliminary meeting involving elders, traditional chiefs and representatives of private aid and development groups was held in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, earlier this month.

Yusuf said Somalis from all walks of life and from within and outside the country would be welcome.

"We hope it will consign the conflict to history," he said, adding it would be part of a process that would lead to a new constitution and elections for a government to replace his transitional administration, whose mandate expires in 2009.

"There is a real opportunity to restore peace and good governance to Somalia," Yusuf said. " Somalia has seen better and peaceful days. I'm sure it can be turned around."

Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a dictator, carved the capital into clan-based areas, and left most of the rest of the country ungoverned. Yusuf's transitional government was formed in 2004 with U.N. help. Weakened by clan rivalries, it struggled to assert authority, leaving a vacuum the Islamic movement moved to fill.

The Islamic movement chased the warlords from Mogadishu last year and was credited with restoring order in areas of southern Somalia it controlled. But some Somalis chafed at its fundamentalist version of Islam and the U.S. and Yusuf's government accused it of harboring al-Qaida suspects.

Yusuf's government, backed by soldiers from neighboring Ethiopia, drove out the Islamic group last year and entered the capital for the first time since it was formed. Mogadishu continues to see sporadic violence, some blamed on remnants of the Islamic movement.

Ethiopian troops have started to pull out, to be replaced by a planned 8,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force charged with protecting the government.

The Associated Press