Somali Interior Minister Blames IClan Courts for Attacks, Praises Arab League.

[General Duke]

Somali Interior Minister Blames Islamic Courts for Attacks, Praises Arab League.

 

Somali Interior Minister Blames Islamic Courts for Attacks, Praises Arab League

 

Al-Sharq al-Awsat

 

Thursday, August 09, 2007

 

 

Report from Cairo by Khalid Mahmud: "Somalia's Interior Minister blames Islamic Courts for attacks against Somali and Ethiopian forces. 'We are doing our utmost to make the dissidents participate in the reconciliation conference'"

 

Somali Interior Minister Mohamed Mahamyud Guled has refused to lay the blame for operations targeting Somali and Ethiopian forces in Mogadishu on external intelligence bodies or terrorist groups, including the Al-Qa'ida organization. Instead, he accused the remnants of the Islamic Courts organization with responsibility for these operations that have been escalating of late.

 

In exclusive statements to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat over the telephone from Mogadishu, Guled said that security conditions in the city were improving. He pointed out that the pace of these operations was receding and that they no longer represented any significance and did not frighten his government.

 

Guled, who has spent nearly two weeks in the Kenyan capital Nairobi after undergoing eye surgery, stressed that the Somali street has begun to realize the dangers of what these extremist elements were doing and that it had consequently begun to cooperate with pro-government security and military bodies to arrest the suspects involved in these incidents.

Guled laid the blame for the failure of efforts by the security bodies to put an end to the continuing attacks against Somali and Ethiopian forces on the shortage of technological equipment and the lack of required expertise among the security cadres. But he pointed out that his government was seeking to overcome these obstacles through cooperation with the Arab countries and other sisterly foreign countries.

 

In reply to the UN demand made by its special envoy to Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall that the Transitional Government of Ali Muhammad Giddi should, if it wanted to succeed in establishing peace in the chaos-gripped country, exert more efforts for contacts with tribal leaders who have not participated in the reconciliation conference, Guled stressed that his government was exerting its utmost in this respect.

 

 

"Our government is principally a government of reconciliation and national unity," he said. "We have not ceased for a single day to extend our hand to everybody, even those who have brandished arms in our faces, but they have responded by ignoring our offer for peace and for amnesty."

 

Guled said it was wrong to hold the Somali government responsible for the boycott of the reconciliation conference by the Islamic Courts and other opposing factions. "We have exerted our utmost to convince them, but we do not have the material means that would enable to do this convincing," he said. "Nonetheless the doors of the conference are open for all at any time".

 

The UN envoy to Somalia had said on his last visit to Mogadishu that all the parties to the conflict in the country should sit together. He called for a comprehensive dialogue comprising all sides in Somalia.

 

Fall nonetheless was unable to convince the leaders and chiefs from to take part in the conference. They expressed a lack of conviction in his ability to succeed in settling the Somali crisis and said that the effort was futile.

In a conspicuous shift, Somali Interior Minister Guled praised the latest stand of the Arab League toward Somalia and said it was a positive stand that reflected Arab concern for finding a political settlement to the Somali crisis.

 

Guled, who is known as (the man with the long hands) expressed the view that the Somalis wanted to see more Arab concern. He called on Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa to expand his efforts and convince the Arab League member states to extend more emergency aid to the Somali government.

 

"We are brothers, and the brother should help his brother in his moment of trial," Guled said. "We are in a crisis at present, and we look to a positive Arab role more than at any time in the past".

 

This change in the stand of the Somali government toward the Arab League followed its recent refusal to hold talks with a delegation representing the Islamic Courts led by Dr Ibrahim Hasan Adw, the head of the Courts' bureau for foreign affairs who recently paid an unpublicized visit to Cairo during which he met a number of Egyptian officials. Informed Arab and Somali sources told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the Arab League had declined to meet the Somali delegation although it received from it a message expounding the Courts' view on developments in the current situation in Somalia, especially with respect to the decision to boycott the national reconciliation conference currently in session in the Somali capital.

 

The Arab League has rejected recent charges by Shaykh Sharif Shaykh Ahmad, chairman of the Islamic Courts executive council in Somalia, concerning what he described as the league's disregard of the continued Ethiopian occupation of his country and its bias in favor of the Transitional Authority of President Abdullahi Yusuf.

 

An official Arab League source told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the criticism leveled by Sharif was incorrect and intentionally ignored what the source described as the intensive goodwill efforts that the Arab League has exerted to secure national reconciliation among the various Somali factions.

 

 

The source considered as unacceptable the holding of the Arab League responsible for the continued presence of the Ethiopian forces in Somalia since the end of last year. He pointed out that the Arab League was among the first Arab and international organizations to call for the immediate pullout of these forces in coordination with the Somali government and the AU peace-keeping forces.

 

 

Elaborating, the source said that the Ethiopian forces entered Somalia at the official request of the Transitional Authority. The Arab League has not ceased its efforts and attempts for conciliation among the Islamic Courts and Somali Authority, he said, pointing out that the Arab League fostered and financed the negotiations that were held in the Sudanese capital Khartoum last year between the two parties but they were not successful due to reasons for which the Arab League was not responsible.

 

 

The chairman of the Islamic Courts executive council had sharply criticized the statement issued by the Arab Committee on Somalia which met last week in Cairo at the level of permanent representatives under the chairmanship of Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa.

 

 

© Compiled and distributed by NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce. All rights reserved.

[General Duke]

Wasiirka Arimaha gudaha ee Dowladda Federalka Somalia ayaa si weyn u difaacay Dowladda KMG oo lagu eedeeyey in ay mas’uuliyadeeda leedahay ka maqnaanshiyaha Hogaanka Maxaakimta ee shirka dib u heshiisiinta.

 

Mogadishu , Khamiis, August 09, 2007 SMC

 

Wasiirka Arimaha gudaha ee Dowladda Federalka Somalia ayaa si weyn u difaacay Dowladda KMG oo lagu eedeeyey in ay mas’uuliyadeeda leedahay ka maqnaanshiyaha Hogaanka Maxaakimta ee shirka dib u heshiisiinta.

 

Hadalkan ayaa Wasiirka arimaha gudaha ee Dowladda KMG Maxamed Maxamuud Guuleed (Gacma-dheerer) waxa uu ku sheegay wareysi gaar ah oo uu siiyey Jariiradda Al-Sharqal Awsat ee kasoo baxda Magaalada London ee cariga Britan.

 

Isagoo ka jawaabayay codsi kaga yimid QM ayaa waxa uu sheegay in Dowlada Federalka ee uu hogaamiyo Madaxweyne C/llaahi Yuusuf Axmad ay ku dadaali doonto intii karaankeeda ah sidii uga soo qaybgalin leheyd Shirka dib u heshiisiinta kooxaha ku kacsan Dowladda.

 

Guuleed Gacma Dheere ayaa sidoo kale sheegay in Dowlada KMG ka ay tahay mid loo unkay siidii ay dadka Soomaaliyeed u hesheesiin leheyd haatan diyaar ay u tahay in ay qanciso kuwa ka biya diidsan Siyaasada Dowlada Federalka.

 

Wasiirka Arimaha Gudaha Maxamad Maxamuud Guuleed Gacma-dheere ayaa ku nuuxnuuxsaday in ay khalad wayn tahay in Dowlada Federalka lagu eedeeyo iney mas’uula ka tahay maqnaashaha hogaankii Golaha Maxaakimta Islaamka madasha shirka dib uheesheesiinta beelaha Somalia ee ka socda Muqdisho.

 

Dhinaca kale ergaga qaramada midoobay François Fall ayaa ku fashilmay inuu ku qanciyo hogaamiyaasha beelaha ****** ka qeybgalka shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaalida, kuwaas oo rajo xumi ka muujiyay guuleysashada shirka dib u heshiisiinta.

 

Wasiirka Arimaha Gudaha Maxamad Maxamuud Guuleed Gacma-dheere ayaa aad u amaanay mowqifka Jamacada carabt ee ku aadan xukuumada KMG ee Somalia, xilli Hogaamiyaha fulinta Maxaakimta Islaamka Somalia uu dhawaan si kulul u cambaareeyey Ururka Jaamacadda Carabta oo uu ku tilmaamay in ay gabtay taageeradii laga filayey ee xoreynta dalka sida uu hadalka u dhigay.

 

Somaliweyn Media Center “SMC”

Mogadishu, Somalia