From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2008 - 14:14:53 EDT
Somali Opposition Factions to Hold Talks in Yemen
By Alisha Ryu
Nairobi
01 July 2008
Somalia's opposition factions are expected to soon hold face-to-face
talks in Yemen. The opposition split over the signing of a controversial
peace agreement last month. The talks follow recent comments by the
principle Islamist signatory to the agreement who said the opposition
will unite against the government if Ethiopian troops do not leave
Somalia within four months. VOA correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from
our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi.
In a telephone interview from the Somalia opposition group's base in
Asmara, Eritrea, Islamist cleric Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys tells VOA that
representatives from his faction and allies of Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed
have received permission from the Yemeni government to hold direct talks
in Sana'a.
Aweys, who is influential among some clan and radical Islamist
insurgents in Somalia, says he is not planning to attend the meeting.
But he says he is ready to support whatever agreement is reached between
the two sides.
The Islamist leader says the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation
of Somalia (ARS) requested the meeting, because there are issues to
discuss and Somalis often resolve differences by talking. He says
everyone is expected to abide by what the majority decides.
Aweys and other hardliners in the alliance stayed away from
U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti that led to the June 9 signing of
an agreement between the more moderate Ahmed and the transitional
federal government.
Opposition hardliners rejected the peace deal.
It stipulates that Ethiopian troops, who have backed the Somali
transitional government since late 2006, would withdraw within 120 days
if a U.N. stabilization force of sufficient strength is in place to
replace them. Hardliners argue the agreement should have called for
Ethiopians to withdraw immediately. They have threatened to remove Ahmed
as chairman of the ARS for participating in the peace process.
U.S.-based Horn of Africa observer and commentator Professor Michael
Weinstein says Ahmed has recently made comments that suggested he was
eager to prove to Somalis that the opposition alliance is intact and
that a clear timetable for an Ethiopian withdrawal has been set.
"He said that we are all on the same page in the ARS. We all want the
Ethiopians out. We will liberate by negotiations, but if that does not
work, we will rejoin the armed resistance and we are confident that if
we liberate by negotiations, the militant faction of the ARS will join
us. So it is all depending on 120 days, according to Sheik Sharif," he
said.
Weinstein says Ahmed's comments may have helped soothe some of the
anger, allowing an opposition reconciliation meeting to take place in
Yemen. But he says Ahmed's words are deeply troubling for the
international community, which must now find a way to quickly deploy a
sizeable stabilization force in Somalia to keep the country from
plunging further into violence.
Fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian and government troops for the
past 18 months has killed more than 85-hundred people, displaced more
than one million others, and has left Somalia in the midst of what the
United Nations says is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.
Another armed Somali group which boycotted the talks in Djibouti, the
Shabab, has not yet commented on the peace deal. Its leaders have long
maintained that the Shabab, recently designated as a terrorist group by
the United States for having ties to al-Qaida, would continue fighting
until all Ethiopians left Somali soil.
Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, leader of the Council of Islamic Courts
speaks during his news conference in Mogadishu, Somalia (file photo)
<http://www.voanews.com/english/images/ap_somalia_islamist_sheik_sharif_
sheik_ahmed_175_26Dec06.jpg>
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