Gov't, Islamic leaders to talk peace in Sudan

Somalia's interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was expected to lead his government's delegation to Sudan on Wednesday for a meeting organised by the Arab League to try and reconcile the administration with Islamic leaders who control Mogadishu, officials said. The meeting between Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Khartoum was convened as the government appeared to be abandoning an earlier reconciliatory tone. On Tuesday, Yusuf said peace talks would be conditional on the UIC recognising his administration and relinquishing control of Mogadishu and other areas it had seized in the country's south-central region. The UIC took control of the Somali capital early this month after routing an alliance of warlords whose militias have held sway in the city since the early 1990s. "We have received an invitation from the Arab League to come to Khartoum and we have accepted," Shaykh Abdulkadir Omar Ali, UIC vice-chairman, told IRIN. "Before any talks, the conditions for talks must be there. They [TFG] have been, of late, using very provocative language that is not conducive to dialogue. It is as if their intention is to scuttle any hope for a dialogue," he added. Yusuf was due to be accompanied by Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi, and speaker of the transitional parliament Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden, among other officials, according to a member of parliament who asked not to be named. During a visit to Ethiopia, Yusuf appeared less eager for dialogue with the UIC than he was when the Islamic leaders defeated the warlords in Mogadishu in early June. "There is a government in Somalia and as long as the Islamic Court Union recognises the government (...) and if they harbour democratic processes, then we will negotiate and open dialogue with them," Yusuf told reporters on Tuesday after meeting Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on Tuesday. Yusuf denied reports that Ethiopia had sent troops to Somalia to help the fledgling TFG defend itself in the event of conflict between the administration and the UIC. "No Ethiopians came to us for that purpose. We didn't sign any military agreement with Ethiopians," said Yusuf. "What we have discussed is (...) how to improve the relationship between the two countries. Anything further than that is not for the press," the Somali leader said. UIC chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed had last weekend claimed that Ethiopian troops had crossed the border and gone to the Somali town of Baidoa, where the TFG is based. Yusuf urged the international community to ignore the UIC, whose leadership is opposed to the deployment of an African peacekeeping force in Somalia to help the TFG stamp its authority in the country. Somalia is currently without a functioning national administration and has been wracked by civil strife since 1991 when the regime led by Muhammad Siyad Barre was toppled. "I think everybody will know why they [the Islamic courts] are against the deployment of the mission. They want to take the country," said Yusuf. "As far as the deployment is concerned we don't have to listen to them. They are not the government of the land, and they are not representing the majority of the country. We have to listen to what is good for the country.” Yusuf said that his interim government was ready to receive the peacekeepers. "On our part we have done what we had to do. We are ready and set for the deployment, but I think it takes time for the AU [Africa Union] and IGAD [Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional body] to go in tandem to the United Nations Security Council to ask for the embargo on arms to be lifted," he said. The UN imposed an arms embargo on Somali in 1992 in a bid to stem the bloodletting that erupted in the country as leaders of the rebel movement that overthrew Siyad Barre turned against each other in a vicious power struggle.