Somali Islamists reject talks before departure of Ethiopian troops

SOMALIA’S powerful Islamists yesterday said they would not attend peace talks with the interim government until Ethiopian troops left their soil.

The fragile interim government had earlier agreed to the talks in Sudan, responding to a UN drive to avert war in the country.

“We will go to Khartoum without any preconditions,” said Abdirizak Adam, interim President Abdullahi Yusuf’s chief of staff.

He was speaking after a meeting with a senior UN envoy in the government’s base in the provincial town of Baidoa.

The Islamic militants had said in a statement they were committed to the talks, however the departure of Ethiopian troops is emerging as a precondition for that commitment.

“As long as Ethiopia is in our country, talks with the government cannot go ahead,” Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told foreign correspondents in Mogadishu.

“If the government cares about the Somalis, it should remove our enemy from the country.”

Previous talks between the two sides broke down on July 22, when the Islamists pulled out because of what they said was an incursion into Somalia by Ethiopian troops to defend the interim government.

The Ethiopian government backs Yusuf and says the Islamists are terrorists. It has intervened in Somalia in the past to attack radical Islamists near its border.

On Monday, Somali legislators urged Ethiopian troops to leave their country, in a first recognition by interim authorities of a military incursion by its neighbour.

Sheikh Aweys, on US and UN lists of people linked to terrorism, was speaking before the UN special envoy Francois Lonseny Fall met Islamist leaders in Mogadishu to try and promote the talks in Sudan.

Mr Fall’s visit came a day after the African Union (AU) urged the UN Security Council to speed up plans to ease an arms embargo on Somalia to allow foreign peacekeepers to deploy.

That appeal followed an agreement by the AU and the east African regional body IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) to send in troops.

This plan has been repeatedly rejected by the Islamists.

The Security Council says it is willing to consider a long-delayed deployment of foreign peacekeepers.