The United Nations believes that a power-sharing deal might offer Somalia's feuding leaders a way to save face and solve the conflict in the Horn of African country.
"The bottom line is that they all want to cling to power,” Augustine Mahiga, the UN’s special envoy to Somalia, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, June 1.
“So, around that fundamental issue, could there be a possibility of power-sharing? I don't know.
"Let them believe there is something for all of them, that there is a win-win situation," he said.
Somalia has sunk into deadly violence after militants from Al-Shabab and its Hizbul Islam allied militia launched a deadly offensive last year against the Western-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.
The dispute between Sheikh Sharif and speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, once an ally of the Somali leader, on the adoption of a new constitution, further aggravated the situation in the war-torn country.
The Western powers who largely fund the UN-backed government and the African peacekeepers propping it up yield few sticks with which to encourage badly needed reforms to an administration riddled by corruption and infighting.
Mahiga said incentives should be brought to the negotiating table, referring to planned talks in Mogadishu later this month.
Those could include more funds to finance government projects, or handing the government more say in defining the reforms and rewarding good performance, Mahiga said.
The envoy hoped the talks would include regional leaders, local elders and women and move the debate beyond the row between president and speaker.
"This (inclusiveness) will create an atmosphere where the two protagonists can save face," he said.
Lawlessness
The UN envoy said that the payment of multi-million dollar ransoms for the release of hijacked vessels encouraged piracy and attracted the involvement of international criminal gangs.
"(Piracy) is getting linked up to the operators of other activities such as drugs, human trafficking and arms trafficking," he told Reuters.
"This is an area where there are specialized criminal actors on the international scene, (and) which is probably becoming more lucrative with fewer risks than even say drug-running."
While foreign powers have deployed warships to the strategic waterways linking Europe and Asia, not enough attention was being paid to the coastline of central Somalia and the Puntland region where the pirates are based, Mahiga said.
The Al-Shabaab rebels, who are on Washington's terrorist list, have demanded a cut of ransoms from pirates operating out of at least one coastal lair, though it is unclear whether any money is changing hands.
"You cannot openly say there is a link between piracy and international terrorism, but the potential is very great," Mahiga said.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the ouster of former president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
More than 14 attempts to restore a functional government have since failed.
Confident he would not join the diplomats assigned to the Somalia desk who end their mission with their head in their hands, Mahiga, in the job for a year, said he had yet to exhaust his energies but admitted the job was fraught with frustration.
"These are people who have perfected the art of deception and discouragement and making you feel that you are ready to give up."
Source: OnIslam.net
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