Thursday, July 26, 2007
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ASMARA (Reuters) - Somali opposition politicians exiled in Eritrea dismissed calls on Thursday to attend a peace meeting in Mogadishu that is also being opened up to Islamists and even insurgents who have attacked the conference venue.
Organisers appeared to be heeding donor calls for inclusiveness when they announced the move on Wednesday.
They had previously said the twice-postponed meeting would not discuss sharing political posts and that Islamist leaders were welcome only as representatives of their clans.
"It's not serious ... the talks are about to fail and they want to gain the sympathy of the Somali people by saying that now they want to include opposition groups," said Yusuf Hassan Ibrahim, a former member of parliament and one of a number of Somali Islamists and opposition figures now living in Asmara.
"It's also being used to gain some sort of support from the international community," Ibrahim told reporters, adding that the government had made no serious effort to reach out to them.
Opponents of Somalia's interim government based in Eritrea had said earlier this month they would hold a rival conference in September to discuss how to "liberate Somalia" from what they say is occupation by the government's Ethiopian military allies.
President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration set up the Mogadishu conference under heavy international pressure, in what diplomats say is its last best hope of gaining legitimacy and trying to secure peace amid a persistent insurgency.
Mortars have been fired at the meeting, which has grouped hundreds of clan leaders, ex-warlords and politicians at a heavily guarded former police base in the north of the city.
Eritrea is the arch-rival of Ethiopia, and diplomats say the two have been waging a proxy war in Somalia since at least last year when Asmara backed a hardline Islamist movement against Yusuf's administration, which is supported by Addis Ababa.
Source: Reuters, July 26, 2007