Western diplomats warn warlords against Mogadishu insecurity
Agence France Presse English Wire , Thursday , March 2, 2000 , 15:25 GMT MOGADISHU, March
2 (AFP) -- Two western envoys currently in Mogadishu to discuss peace prospects with
warlords and civic leaders warned Thursday that the Somali capital will receive no
international aid before order is restored. Italian envoy to Somalia Francesco Sciortino
and European Commission representative J. Duarte de Carvalho said that while inter-clan
fighting persisted, the international community will not reopen offices here. Mogadishu
has been divided and ruled by ruthless warlords from rival clans and freelance gunmen
since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in January 1991. The two envoys held talks
with warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed and other leaders, who have accepted peace proposals for
Somalia by made by President Ismael Omar Guelleh of neighbouring Djibouti. However, rival
warlords Mohamed Qanyare Afrah and Hussein Mohamed Aidid, who oppose the Guelleh
proposals, refused to meet the western emissaries. "Inter-clan armed rivalry,
abduction and destruction or looting of property are hampering the efforts to assist the
Somali people in Mogadishu,"Sciortino told journalists. He added that the
international community could setup offices in Mogadishu for security reasons. Qanyare
told AFP by telephone that his faction and its allies had no faith in the Djibouti peace
plan. They therefore refused to meet Sciortino and Carvalho because "they represent
ideas that would not be accepted by our supporters". Warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow, who
controlssouthwest Mogadishu, also failed to meet the two envoys, who have in the past two
days been meeting civic leaders, professional figures and the heads of Islamic Courts
which control parts of Somalia. Meanwhile, the "Parliament" in the self-declared
Republic of Somaliland, in the north of the Horn of Africa nation, hasalso ruled that any
Somalilander who attends a peace conference in Djibouti, scheduled to be held in April,
would be guilty of "treason." Demonstrators in Somaliland, which seceded from
the rest of Somalia in May 1991, but has yet to be recognised by the outside world, burnt
the Somali flag at the weekend and chanted slogans against the Djibouti peace plan.
Guelleh's initiative to end more than nine years of clan warfare in Somalia and to set up
a transitional government with a president, parliament and a prime minster, has been seen
as the country's best hope for peace by the international community and unarmed Somalis.
str-amu/lto/nb