(SomaliNet) SomaliÂ’s Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi called on Islamic Courts Union to stop the war and come on the negotiation table casting all the prospects of the current clashes on the Islamists. The premier made the statement on Saturday in news conference held at Baidao city, the base of interim government. He denied the Islamist claim that they are within 10 km to Baidoa as baseless and fabrication saying the reality is that they faced huge casualties in the fronts. Gedi confirmed that several foreign insurgents were killed in the clashes. He accused the Islamic Courts of conducting terror attacks targeting the government base, Baidoa.
“Justifying for the Ethiopian troops that training the government forces, the so called Islamists declared that after seven days they will attack Baidoa,” said Gedi in his press confertence.
He said, to prevent peace initiatives, the Islamic Courts coincided their attack on the visit by the European commissioner for development and aid Louis Michel. “On behalf of the transitional federal government, I am very sorry that young Somalis were forced or misled to join what they termed as jihad,” said Mr. Gedi. “I don’t know where the Islam stated that Muslim person should launch Jihad on another innocent Muslim,”
He said since the creation of the TFG, it was avoiding to fuel war in the country and was working on the peace and the reconciliation among Somalis and how society would be out of the long-standing crisis. “The government welcomed the civil uprising against warlords in Mogadishu six months ago and offered a peace dialogue with the Islamic Courts Union reaching ceasefire agreement but the ICU itself backed away the truce after it raided key towns of southern Somalia,” Gedi said adding “the Islamic Courts again singed an agreement with the government in the second round of talks in Khartoum, Sudan over to stop all hostile actions and attacks on towns but they failed to obey that and captured the southern port city of Kismayo where they burnt the Somalia flag and opened fire on protestors in the streets of Kismayo.”
Gedi said the Islamists put more pressure on the people in Mogadishu who earlier gave support to their struggle against the warlords. They stopped women who feed about80% of the population from doing business. “As you are aware of, the courts oppressed the public living in the area they captured, for instance the ICU put blocks on the freedom of speech; they banned the sessions of the NGOs and human rights activists; apparently they killed several Somali youths as they were watching soccer matches,” said Gedi in the press conference.
He said the Islamists were the ones who were behind the killing of number of government members and declared Jihad on the federal institutionsnotably, the ICU was responsible of killing the former minister of constitutional and federalism Abdalla Derow Isaaq. “They had attempted to assassinate the president of Somalia Abdulahi Yusuf by committing suicide attacks in Baidoa and also carried out another bomb explosion at Baidoa main entrance killing innocents, Gedi added.
As widely known, the Islamist militia imposed sanction on the people in Bay and Bakol regions in southwest of Somalia by cutting off the commercial access to these regions from the capital making the life more difficulty, he said. The premier said that Islamists put conditions before the peace talks in Khartoum and rejected to go to the negotiation table. Mr. Gedi sent his condolence to all the Somali relatives that lost their beloved ones in the clashes. He called for the parents of the misled children to the fighting to reconsider what he called ‘the non-exist Jihad declared by the so-called power hungry Islamic Courts’.
Gedi made it clear that ICU brought international criminals or terrorists to destabilize the country. “Their aim is to only make Somalia base of terror attack against the interests of westerns in horn of Africa region,” he said.