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Somalia: Country Sets Peace Talks for Sunday Amid Attacks
15/07/07,
The Reporter (Addis Ababa)
14 July 2007
Posted to the web 14 July 2007
Namrud Berhane
The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) said it is determined to hold the reconciliation
conference tomorrow, as several grenade blasts rocked Mogadishu killing three and wounding
some 10 people.
The presidential palace Villa Somalia where the president was holding his meeting with the
Hawiye clan elders was reported to have been under attack too.
"Even if a nuclear bomb explodes in Mogadishu, the conference will happen as scheduled,"
President Abdullahi Yusuf is reported to have said.
According to reports some 800 of the 1300 delegates who are attend the conference are already
in the capital.
"We have indicated that we offered an official pardon to Islamic Courts followers if they
were
giving up their resistance against the federal government, but this conference will not be
stopped by any force," Yusuf told journalists on Thursday.
The peace conference which was first announced in January has been suspended three mainly
due to the resistance against from certain Somali clans.
On Thursday, TFG president Abdullahi Yusuf who is of the Darood clan, was with Hawiye clan
elder Hadji Abdi Iman when he said that his government has given amnesty to all UIC fighters
if they give up their resistance against the government.
In addition to the UIC fighters, the Hawiye, particularly the Ayir sub clan are said to
feel marginalized and have been behind most of the opposition against the government.
Hadji Abdi Iman who had also been opposing the TFG said on Thursday: "We, as Hawiye, have
accepted the amnesty extended to the people who worked with the UIC from the government."
However, skeptics are also expressing their views that even if the peace conference does
take place it is going to take a long time and is less likely to produce any lasting
agreement between the various clans and elements in Somalia.
They argue that if the peace conference is to have any meaningful result, the TFG must
first reconstitute itself to be an all inclusive power sharing government.
Source:allafrica.com
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