More than 300 clerics and clan elders gathering in the bullet-pocked capital, Mogadishu, called Thursday for African Union peacekeepers to leave Somalia within 120days, a demand that put the nation’s transitional government in an awkward position.
Now that Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a moderate Islamist cleric, has been selected as Somalia’s president, the government is hoping that it can work with the clerics to help stabilize the nation. To that end, the clerics called on all Islamist fighters to endorse peace and to stop the “killing, abducting, robbing and harming” of aid workers in the country.
But the government has also said that it needs international peacekeepers to help establish order in the nation, which has been torn by years of violence.
SOURCE: NY TIMES
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