|
AFP, MOGADISHU - A hardline Somali Islamist leader Tuesday rejected a three-month truce reached between Mogadishu and its political foes, casting a damper on a fresh UN bid to bring peace to the shattered nation.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential cleric designated a terrorist by the United States for suspected links to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, said Monday's peace talks in Djibouti and the subsequent pact were "fruitless."
"I do not believe that the outcome of this conference will have any impact on the resistance in Somalia. We shall continue fighting until we liberate our country from the enemies of Allah," Aweys told Mogadishu-based Shabelle radio.
"The aim of the meeting was to derail the holy war in the country," added Aweys, a member of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), an opposition umbrella group dominated by Islamists and based in the Eritrean capital Asmara.
Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein and ARS chief Sheikh Sharif Ahmed signed the accord late Monday at the second of talks organised and mediated by the UN special envoy for Somalia Ahmedou Ould Abdallah.
While some Islamist leaders and influential clan leaders joined the talks, Aweys and other hardline Islamists stayed away, saying they would not take part unless Ethiopian troops backing government forces pulled out of Somalia.
The same hardliners, who also boycotted a failed peace meeting organised by the government in Mogadishu last year, also insisted the Djibouti conference was biased.
According to the accord, Ethiopian troops would withdraw after the United Nations deployed peacekeepers from countries friendly to Somalia -- excluding neighbouring states -- within 120 days after the armistice takes effect.
It said the government would meanwhile "act in accordance with the decision that has already been taken by the Ethiopian government to withdraw its troops from Somalia after the deployment of a sufficient number of UN forces."
On May 15, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution opening the way to a gradual return of UN staff to Somalia and possibly resulting in the deployment of peacekeepers there, but did not set a timetable.
But Aweys said the new truce did not set a deadline for the pullout of Ethiopian troops, who deployed at the end of 2006 and ousted Islamists from south and central Somalia.
"The agreement does not offer a timetable of the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces. It is not clear when they will leave," Aweys added.
The Islamists have waged a guerrilla war since then, which according to internationa rights groups and aid agencies has left at least 6,000 civilians dead and displaced hundreds of thousands mainly from the flashpoint capital Mogadishu.
The rivals also agreed to facilitate unhindered passage of humanitarian supplies to around 2.6 million Somalis in need of urgent food aid even though similar pledge on May 16 went unheeded.
The figure is expected to reach 3.5 million by the year-end because of a prolonged drought and fast rising inflation.
But the United Nations and aid groups have scaled down operations owing to increased insecurity.
The country has been plagued by an uninterrupted civil war since the 1991 overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre. A string of previous peace initiatives and truce deals have failed.
The African Union has deployed ome 2,600 peacekeepers deployed in Somalia -- short of the pledged 8,000 troops -- but have failed to stem the rising tide of insurgency in the nation of 10 million.
|
News 
RSS