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Somali warlords take tentative step towards peace
Rival Somali warlords on Saturday agreed a tentative step forward in a peace plan designed to restore order to a chaotic country where lawlessness has raised international security fears. East African foreign ministers, who have been seeking to shepherd a Somali deal, said representatives from close to 40 factions would now move to a final phase of peace talks. "The ministers expressed their readiness to mobilize regional and international support for recognition of the (Somali) government to be established... at the conclusion of the process," the ministers said in a joint statement after the latest round of negotiations outside the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Saturday's agreement, which resolved a dispute over how Somalia's eventual parliament is to be selected, is far from a final deal for the battered country. But it paves the way for the final power-sharing phase of the talks which organizers hope will establish a transitional charter, choose a parliament and install a government. Saturday's deal came despite Kenya's arrest of prominent Somali warlord Hussein Aideed, who was jailed for a month on Thursday over debts owed to a Kenyan businessman. Thousands of Somalis took to Mogadishu's streets on Saturday to protest the arrest of Aideed, who came to power after the death of his father, Mohamed Farah Aideed -- whose clashes with U.S. troops in 1993 became the basis for the Hollywood film "Black Hawk Down." "The Kenyan government should release our leader because he was a guest of the Kenyan government and its people," said Abukar Osman, a deputy chairman of Aideed's Somali National Alliance. Organizers of the Nairobi talks said Aideed's faction was represented by a deputy and signed the agreement.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-05-24
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=33777