Somali Peace Conference Postponed For Third Time

MOGADISHU, June 13, 2007 -- A peace conference for feuding Somali factions planned for June 14 has been put back by a month to allow organizers to finalize logistics, officials said Wednesday.

We have received requests from some Somali clans asking for more time choose delegates and we need time to prepare the venue for the conference," Ali Mahdi, the conference's chief organizer told journalists in Mogadishu.

"So we have decided to postpone the congress until July 15."

The conference was initially set to open on April 16, but has now been put off three times.

Somali interim President Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed first announced the holding of the meeting, aimed at stemming years of bloodletting in the country, at an African Union summit in January.

The delay comes a day after renegade Somali leaders, including Islamists, said they would not recognize the internationally-backed, government-organized meeting.

In addition, Islamist top official Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, powerful ex-parliament speaker Sheikh Hassan Sheikh Aden and the diaspora vowed to resist the "occupation" of Somalia by Ethiopian forces who back the Somali interim government.

"(We) consider the reconciliation conference ... as a new chapter of fragmenting the Somali society with the hands of its arch-enemy and cement the occupation," the renegades said in a statement.

Somalia has been without an effective government since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre which sparked a bloody power struggle that has defied repeated attempts to restore stability.  

Source: AFP

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