Clinton Offers Assurances to Somali Government

Sarah Elliott/European Pressphoto Agency

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with the president of Somalia's transitional government, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, during a news conference on Thursday in Nairobi, Kenya.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the new president of Somalia’s transitional government, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, for more than an hour on Thursday, expressing support for his fragile administration and warning Eritrea against supporting militants in the country.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Sheikh Sharif, Mrs. Clinton said that his government “is the best hope we’ve had for some time,” and she reiterated the United States’ commitment to helping arm and train the government’s fledgling security services.Sheikh Sharif can use the help. His moderate Islamist government controls no more than a few city blocks in a country the size of California, with extremist Islamist groups, like the Shabab, which Washington calls a proxy for Al Qaeda, in charge of much of the rest.

Mrs. Clinton said that the battle for Somalia, which has been the lawless home to Islamist extremists, terrorists, gun runners, drug smugglers, teenage gunmen and even pirates for the past 18 years, is deeply connected to American interests.

“No doubt that Al Shabab wants to obtain control over Somalia and use it as a base to influence and infiltrate surrounding countries and launch attacks against countries far and near,” she said. “If Al Shabab were to obtain a haven in Somalia which could then attract Al Qaeda and other terrorist actors, it would be a threat to the United States.”

She warned of unspecified consequences for Eritrea if it continued what she said was its support for Al Shabab and its efforts to destabilize Somalia. “It’s long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support for Al Shabab,” she said. “We intend to take action if they do not cease.”

This is not the first time the United States has issued either the accusations or the warnings. In recent years, the Bush administration singled out Eritrea as a state sponsor of terrorism, and last week the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, threatened sanctions against the country if it did not cease its support of the militants.

Eritrea has long denied any involvement in Somalia.

Before leaving Kenya, the first stop on a seven-nation tour that will take her to South Africa, Angola, Congo and Nigeria, Mrs. Clinton visited the site where the American Embassy to Kenya was destroyed by Al Qaeda in 1998. The attack leveled several buildings in downtown Nairobi, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands, mostly impoverished Kenyans. Many people were blinded by flying glass.

Mrs. Clinton quietly laid a wreath at the foot of a plaque commemorating the people killed that day, and she told a group of Kenyan survivors, including an old blind man leaning on a cane, “We will continue to work with you.” Many victims have complained that the United States abandoned them after the attack and have been pleading for the American government to give them compensation money.

One little boy stood next to Mrs. Clinton for most of her visit to the bomb site. His name was Michael Macharia, and both his parents were working in the same building that day and were killed together when the bomb exploded. Mrs. Clinton said that Michael, who is being raised by his grandparents and is now 14, was doing excellently in school and that she would tell President Obama about “his incredible character.”

Michael bowed his head bashfully, and later, when asked how it felt to be recognized by the American secretary of state, said, “It’s good.”

Mrs. Clinton, seeming to grow increasingly frustrated with Kenya’s leaders, toughened her message on Thursday, saying that if the Kenyan government refused to set up a tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of last year’s election-driven bloodshed, the International Criminal Court at the Hague would get involved.

“I have urged that the Kenyan government find the way forward themselves,” she said. “But if not, then the names turned over to the I.C.C. will be opened, and an investigation will begin.”

In July the former United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, handed a sealed envelope with a list of prime suspects to the International Criminal Court. The court has also recently threatened to intervene if Kenyan leaders decide to continue the country’s stubborn history of impunity.

The American government and Kenyan human rights groups have been pressing Kenya’s leaders to establish a local tribunal, but several of the top suspects are widely believed to be high-ranking ministers who have blocked any effort that might lead to their own prosecution.

Mrs. Clinton, who said she was carrying a message directly from President Obama — “the son of Kenya,” in her words — added, “If there’s not going to be a special local tribunal that has the confidence of the people, then the people deserve to know that there is some process to hold people accountable.”

More than 1,000 people were killed around the country when the disputed December 2007 presidential election set off a wave of ethnic and political fighting. Initially, much of the violence seemed like spontaneous outrage vented along ethnic lines, though later it became evident that it had been at least partly organized by local leaders and village elders, and possibly by higher authorities.

The United States is not a signatory to the treaty that created the International Criminal Court, the first permanent institution authorized to try individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. While former President Bill Clinton supported joining the court, former President George W. Bush opposed it, out of concern that Americans could face politically motivated prosecutions.

But Mrs. Clinton suggested that could change in the future.

It is, she told a public forum at the University of Nairobi, “a great regret, but it is a fact that we are not yet a signatory. But we have supported the court and continue to do so.”

Source: nytimes