Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Three days after the Islamists seized Dinsoor township, about 270 kilometres (170 miles) west of the capital Mogadishu, the government ruled out participating in the next round of peace talks in Khartoum aimed at averting a full-scale war.
"This group is expanding its territory by force and violating the truce agreement, there is no point for peace talks if it cannot respect what it has already signed," Information Minister Ali Jama told AFP Tuesday.
"For talks to continue, there must be a conducive environment and since that is not there at the moment, we are not ready for talks," he explained.
The United Nations special envoy for Somalia Francois Fall suggested Arab-League mediated talks resume on December 15, but the government has ruled its participation as a "waste of time."
But the government position is a setback to efforts by Fall, who on Monday held talks with the Islamists' supreme leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys seeking to save the peace talks.
The Islamic movement, which controls much of south and central Somalia, has also said it would not meet the government unless Ethiopian troops deployed in Somalia to protect the transitional administration pullout.
Previous rounds of talks yielded truce and mutual recognition pacts, both of which have been violated.
Witnesses said Islamic fighters and government forces, backed by Ethiopian soldiers, have continued deploying in several locations, girding for an all-out war that Somali watchers warn could engulf the entire Horn of Africa region.
Addis Ababa denies deploying thousands of troops across the border but acknowledges sending military advisers and trainers to assist the Somali government threatened by the rapid expansion of the Islamists.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has told parliament that Ethiopia has completed preparations for war with the Islamists and gotten lawmakers' approval to defend the country from the Islamist threat.
He says the Islamists are collaborating with Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea and Ethiopian separatist rebel groups to destabilize mainly Christian Ethiopia, which has a large, potentially restive Muslim minority.
Alarmed by a possible regional conflict, the regional, seven-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has urged for a withdrawal of foreign forces from Somalia.
In a meeting with the Islamists in Djibouti over the weekend, IGAD expressed its "desire to realise peace and stability in Somalia through a negotiated political settlement."
In addition, the UN Security Council is due to decided on a United States-drafted resolution to ease the 1992 arms embargo on Somalia and approve the deployment of African peacekeepers to protect the government.
While the government has lobbied the UN to hasten its decision, the Islamists accused of links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda, have rejected the call, with a radical wing of clerics vowing to launch attacks.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Siad Barre and a two-year-old government has failed to exert control across the nation of about 10 million people.
Years of conflict in Somalia has worsened the effects of current flooding that has killed at least 120 people and affected about a million others, 300,000 of them displaced.
Source: AFP, Dec 05, 2006