Saturday, February 28, 2009

Somali government, Islamic group agree to truce

The government and an Islamic insurgent group have reached a cease-fire deal, Somalia's new president said on Saturday, days after dozens of civilians were killed in fighting in the Somali capital.

Elders of Mogadishu's dominant clan, the Hawiye, mediated between the government and the Islamic Party, one of two major insurgent groups in Somalia, said Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. He said the negotiators did not meet face-to-face.

"We hope all differences will be solved peacefully," Ahmed told journalists at a news conference at the presidential palace in Mogadishu. The president declined to give any other details about the truce.

Islamic Party spokesman Sheik Muse Abdi Arale said his group respects the elders and things are moving in the right direction but he declined to give more details.

"Elders are making efforts to end the hostilities in Mogadishu and the sides have accepted and welcomed our effort," Ahmed Diriye Ali, one of the mediators, told The Associated Press.

Some of the worst fighting in Mogadishu has taken place in recent weeks. Islamist insurgents battled government and African Union troops for two consecutive days this week and the independent Elman Human Rights Organization said at least 49 civilians were killed.

Mogadishu has been the epicenter of violence in Somalia during the 18 years the country has been without an effective government.

The Islamic Party opposes the presence of AU troops in Somalia and has vowed to fight them until they leave the Horn of Africa nation.

The troops are also opposed by the hardline al-Shabab militia, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida. The group denies this. Its officials were not available for comment Saturday.

The president said Saturday that his government has asked the AU peacekeeping force to keep away from residential areas when it makes any counteroffensives after coming under attack, "so that we can save civilian lives."

"AU troops are here to help us and once we restore order and can do without them, we will ask them to leave," Ahmed told journalists.

Calls to the AU peacekeeping force's spokesman went unanswered.

AU peacekeepers have a restricted mandate to guard key government installations in Mogadishu. Hardline groups, however, still view them as an occupying force. Until this week's fighting, the AU force had not been involved in fighting Islamic militants in the capital during battles that have killed thousands of civilians over the past two years.

Conflict-ridden Somalia is carved up into fiefdoms controlled by different militia groups — some led by clan warlords, others by Islamic leaders — who often form rapidly shifting alliances.

The government now directly controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and the border town of El Berde. But Ahmed, a moderate Islamist who became president in January, has allies among the militias that control much of central and pockets of southern Somalia.

Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. They then turned on each other, plunging the nation of 7 million into anarchy and chaos.

Source: AP

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