September 9, 2007 – Text of report by Khalid Mahmud in Cairo: " Somalia: Secret talks in Djibouti between Gedi and dissidents from Islamic Courts simultaneously with opposition conference in Eritrea" by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat website on 7 September

Somali Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi yesterday began a surprise visit to Djibouti to meet with dissidents from the Islamic Courts organization, at a time when the groups that are opposed to the transitional authority and the Ethiopian military presence in Somalia have begun a conference in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, to unify their political stands and organizational cadres.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat learned that Gedi has received a letter from Abu-Bakr, imam of (Adani), who is considered to be the main financier of the Islamic Courts organization. The letter calls on Gedi to hold reconciliation talks between the two sides, under the sponsorship of Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh.

Informed Somali sources said that Gedi, who is accompanied by Foreign Minister Husayn Elabe Fahiye, is about to convince some of the dissidents from the Islamic Courts to return to Mogadishu and take part in the second stage of the Somali reconciliation conference, which concluded its first stage in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last week. The sources revealed that a high-level Somali delegation, which is led by Ali Mahdi Mohamed, chairman of the reconciliation conference, and which includes 300 members from the participants in the conference, is ready [sentence incomplete as published; presumably to travel to Djibouti].

Meanwhile, a high-level Somali official has accused Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki of interfering in the internal affairs of Somalia through hosting an organizational conference for the groups opposing the transitional authority, led by Somali President Abdillahi Yusuf. In a telephone contact from Mogadishu, the official, who asked Al-Sharq al-Awsat not to reveal his identity, said that Afewerki seeks to contain the Somali opposition and exploit it as a bargaining chip as part of the tense relations with Ethiopia.

The official stressed that his government does not see any importance of the Asmara conference. He accused the participants in the conference of being mercenaries who receive unlimited support from the Eritrean regime to hinder efforts to achieve peace and stability in Somalia, which has been suffering from total political and security chaos since 1991.

The appearance of Shaykh Hasan Dahir Aweys, head of the Shura Council of the Islamic Courts, at the opening session of the conference has come as a big surprise, given that this is the first time Aweys has appeared in public in a foreign country since the collapse of the Islamic Courts and the success of the Somali government forces, which are backed by the Ethiopian Army, in expelling the military wing of the Islamic Courts from the Somali capital at the end of last year. This is also Aweys's first public appearance in about two months, although he is pursued by the US, Ethiopian, Kenyan, and Somali intelligence services on the charge of involvement in terrorist operations.

Meanwhile, Somali sources told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that Somali Foreign Minister Fahiye will participate in the meeting to be held by the International Contact Group on Somalia in the Italian capital, Rome, next Monday. The Somali Government is awaiting with great interest the outcome of this meeting, which will be held simultaneously with a similar meeting that will be held by the UN Security Council to examine its request for deploying more African peacekeeping forces and urge the international community to provide further financial and logistical assistance to enable it to succeed in its mission to enforce law and order in the country.

In another development, a military delegation from Burundi has held talks in Mogadishu with officials in the transitional government and the African Union [AU] peacekeeping mission to pave the way for deploying hundreds of members of Burundi's forces as part of the peacekeeping forces, which only include Ugandan forces at present. Following these talks, a Somali official told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the Burundian forces will indeed have been deployed in scattered areas of the capital, in cooperation with the Ugandan forces, by the end of next month.

In a separate development, Somali President Abdillahi Yusuf will visit Ethiopia next week upon an official invitation from Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to attend the Ethiopian millennium celebrations. Zenawi has invited nine African leaders to attend these celebrations. They are the presidents of Burundi, Djibouti, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Zenawi has sent similar invitations to Mahmud Abbas (Abu-Mazin), president of the Palestinian National Authority, and Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih.

Somali sources had recently revealed an Ethiopian mediation between the Somali president and Dahir Riyale Kahin, president of the so-called Republic of Somaliland, which unilaterally declared its separation from the Somali state in 1991. The sources said that the Ethiopian prime minister seeks to approximate the views of Yusuf and Kahin after the legislative elections, which will be held in Somaliland in December 2007. The sources noted that Kahin has recently made a visit to the Ethiopian capital upon an official invitation from Zenawi to discuss bilateral relations and also to open direct dialogue, under Ethiopian sponsorship, between the two sides.

The government of Somaliland has officially boycotted the national reconciliation conference in Mogadishu. It said that it is not concerned with this conference, at a time when Kahin seeks to consolidate the separation through trying to obtain international and African support for the region's separation from Somalia. On the other hand, the Somali transitional government says that it wants to hold national unity talks with Kahin's government, noting that it may agree to grant it a status that is similar to autonomy as part of the central federal state of Somalia.

Source: Al-Sharq al-Awsat website, London, in Arabic 7 Sep 07

BBC Monitoring