2006年VOA标准英语-Somalia Government, Islamist Forces to Hold Tal

（单词翻译）

By Nico Gnecchi
Nairobi
30 August 2006

		Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, left, with Sudanese President Omar El Bashir (File photo)

The Somali government and the Islamist forces that control many parts of the country are expected to meet for a much-delayed second round of Arab League-mediated talks in Sudan later this week but remain at odds¹ on numerous key matters. Most critical is the proposed deployment² of an East African peacekeeping force to help the government shore up its limited authority, a mission the Islamists have vowed³ to resist.

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The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional organization, including Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, says preparations have been made to dispatch African peacekeeping troops to Somalia by October.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki agreed during talks Tuesday to support the deployment of peacekeepers in Somalia to ensure political stability. Uganda has also voiced a strong commitment to sending troops.

The mission aims at strengthening the transitional government's limited authority in the southern and central regions of Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu where the Islamist courts have established control.

But the mission will meet some resistance.

The Islamists, who seized Mogadishu from factional warlords in June, have vowed to resist at any cost the deployment of peacekeepers. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the spiritual head of the Islamic forces has openly threatened neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia for attempting to intervene. He has warned that Islamists will wage a holy war against any foreign invasion.

Peace negotiations⁴ expected to begin this week in the Sudanese capital Khartoum between the transitional government and Islamists, will focus on the issue of foreign forces, says Najum Mushtaq, a Somalia analyst⁵.

"The idea of sending forces without the consent of the major factions⁶ in Somalia, which includes the Islamic courts, would of course be disastrous⁷. In the talks beginning in Khartoum, foreign forces will be the main contentious⁸ point in those talks," he said.

Key members of Somalia's transitional government have also opposed an immediate⁹ and rushed deployment of foreign forces, calling for the training and financing of Somali national forces instead. But Ethiopia and Kenya have for a long time been worried about the event of a civil war breaking out and flowing across their borders.

Somalia has been without a functioning central government since the ousting¹⁰ of Mohamed Said Barre in 1991, an event that plunged¹¹ the country into civil war.