Peace talks expected to resume

The Somali national reconciliation conference is expected to reconvene this weekend in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, after a three-week hiatus, a member of its organizing committee told IRIN.

The talks were adjourned after the reading of a draft charter - an interim constitution - "so that Somali legal experts and a Kenyan constitutional lawyer could harmonise the different views "and come up with a clean document," said James Kiboi of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) technical committee which is steering the talks.

The proceedings were also adjourned "due to the absence of a number of prominent leaders", a member of the Somali civil Society group attending the conference told IRIN. Some of the countries underwriting the cost of the talks felt that "the conference will not be broad-based enough without the presence of these people and asked IGAD to give time to bring everyone on board," added the source.

Among those absent from the talks are the president of Somalia's Transitional National Government, Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, prominent Mogadishu-based faction leaders Muse Sudi Yalahow and Usman Hasan Ato, the leader of the Kismayo-based Juba Valley Alliance (JVA) Col Barre Adan Hirale, and Muhammad Ibrahim Habsade of the Rahaweyn Resistance Army (RRA).

However, Kiboi, the committee's liaison officer expressed optimism that leaders who had left the conference would rejoin by the end of this week. "We expect all of them to return as early as this Saturday [13 September]," he said.

Kiboi said that once the conference was back in session, it would be expected "to debate and adopt" the charter and move to the third and final phase of the talks, which deals with the thorny issue of power-sharing. This phase will be difficult "but not insurmountable", Kiboi told IRIN. "We have had some difficult times already and we have overcome." There are "tough times in this phase, but I am optimistic any obstacles will be overcome", he added.

The IGAD-sponsored talks began in October 2002 in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret, but were moved to Nairobi in February this year. The talks, which are being held in Nairobi's Mbagathi suburb, have been dogged by wrangles over issues such as the interim charter, the number of participants and the selection of future parliamentarians.