Somali President and Ex-Capital Baidoa Surrounded by Trouble, UN Council Told at Djibouti Talks

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa
www.innercitypress.com/unsc2djibouti060208.html

DJIBOUTI, June 2 -- As UN Security Council members waited to meet Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf of the Transitional Federal Government, they received briefings in a luxury hotel about the identities and backgrounds of those meeting with the TFG, and the security situation in Puntland, Somaliland and the South and Central portions of the country. The press was allowed to listen, but not to attribute quotes to any participant. Questions arose about whether the armed opponents on the ground, who are said to already control Jowar and to be massing around Baidoa, are sufficiently represented in these talks. In response, it was pointed out that some of the non-attendees are subject to UN sanctions, but live in and travel through countries serving on the Security Council, some on a permanent basis.

The UN's advice, it seems, is to participate in the peace process and then maybe, just maybe, they will be taken off the list. These same incentives are being deployed on opposition figures now leaving Eritrea for Djibouti, Yemen and, they hope, Kenya. To help them with asylum, the UN expects them to sign something.

With this gang, coercion may not be the right word. But the sincerity of commitments under duress remains dubious.

Reference was made to previous attempts to solve the Somali problems, meetings with up to 3000 participants in processes allowed to drag on for 18 to 24 hours, described as not serious. This process, it is said, is limited to the TFG and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (or a mere portion of the ARS, it was pointed out), with only 22 participants on each side. They are all staying in the same hotel, the luxurious Djibouti Palace Kempinski, apparently at UN expense. They talk with each other by phone, it was said, to not be seen together.

With the scheduled voting in New York on the Council's resolution on piracy only nine hours away, members were told that some of the best pirates are, in fact, cousins of President Yusuf. They are, its seems, excellent mariners, though inconvenient relatives at this time.

President Yusuf, fresh from having his plane mortar-attacked in Mogadishu, arrived with an entourage of twenty. The press were allowed for photos, and the beginning of Yusuf's speech. And then exile into the long marble-floored hallways of this luxury hotel, with bouquets of lush roses and metal detectors everywhere.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc2djibouti060208.html