Opposition group urges international community to help

The Somali opposition grouping, Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC), on Friday urged the international community to step in and resolve once and for all the civil conflict that has blighted the war-ravaged country since 1991.

Addressing a press conference at the Ghion Hotel in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, speakers for the SRRC claimed Somalia had become "a haven for terrorists".

"We call on the international community to help the Somali people build a government, and security and democracy," SRRC chairman General Adan Abdullahi Gabyow said. But he rejected peace initiatives for Somalia from the ninth summit of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), held in Sudan last week. He said any peace talks should be held in a "neutral country", possibly in Europe.

"The people of Somalia have had enough of fighting and no government," he added. "We have been waiting 11 years for IGAD to solve our problems and we want to start the reconstruction of our country. There is no peace, no law and order, no nothing. We are suffering, our people are dying."

The SRRC is a grouping of southern factions opposed to Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG). Addressing the press conference, faction leader and SRRC co-chairman Hussein Aideed read out a list of eight names, claiming they were members of Osama bin-Laden's Al-Qaeda network, who had entered Somalia by boat on 6 January and set up a new organisation known as 'Al-Khilaya al-Naima'.

"The Horn of Africa requires special attention and whatever means the [international] military coalition wants to use to eradicate terrorism we support," he said. "We appreciate the international community’s effort to block the sea from Al-Qaeda [members] escaping from Afghanistan to Somalia...But the work to defeat terrorists in the Horn of Africa is a long haul and it requires intensive work with neighbouring countries - Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia."

Also addressing the press conference was Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigadud, the chairman of the Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA) which controls Somalia's Bay and Bakol regions and which is also a member of the SRRC. He said weapons had to be handed in before peace could be achieved.

"Somalia itself cannot solve its own problem," Shatigadud said. "There should be intervention and disarmament first, then reconciliation, and a [peace] conference should take place at that time, not before." He said Somalia was a "haven for terrorists and drug dealers – all bad things with human beings suffering."