Somalia's Islamist groups consolidate gain
Somalia-USA, Politics, 6/14/2006

A Washington Post report today said Islamist Militias have taken hold of a key town of Jowhar and the official "parliament approved deployment of foreign troops."

Yesterday, US Department Of State spokeman Sean McCormack said "We do have concerns about al-Qaeda presence in Somalia and specifically individuals and their presence in Somalia. Nobody wants Somalia to become a safe haven. Well, maybe there are some, those terrorists. But the international community certainly doesn't want to see Somalia turn into a safe haven," and indicated that he would provide details about the presence of al-Qaeda in Somaila.

McCormack added "Nobody wants to see the continued suffering of the Somali people, and that's one of the reasons why we're having a contact group meeting. The U.S. has convened -- is going to convene this contact group meeting on Thursday. And just an update for everybody from yesterday, I have confirmed that the United Nations and African Union have been invited to participate as observers in that meeting. And just so you know right now, the attendance list is the United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Italy and Tanzania and the European Union."

McCormack said "So we're, at that meeting, going to be talking a little bit about how we might cooperate together to try to meet everybody's goal and that is to build up institutions within Somalia that might, serve as a foundation for one day, a functioning government. There is not a functioning government in Somalia right now. There hasn't been for quite some time. So that's the initial goal of this meeting, to look at what efforts we have in place, what efforts we might coordinate on and what efforts we might launch. And I think one other topic is we would look at who else might join this group. I think we wanted to start smaller rather than larger. And then maybe as the subject matter and time dictate, then we can expand the size of the group."


Asked "the head of Islamic courts saying that he doesn't want it to turn into a Taliban state, have you taken reassurance from that or are you still concerned that this could be -- the Islamic courts could be a way of this country becoming more of a safe haven for terrorists? "

McCormack said "we're going to reserve judgment. We do have a letter from them asking to open a channel of dialogue. We have not yet responded to that letter. We want to have a better understanding of this group, who is part of this group. I think that our initial assessment is that it is not a homogenous group, meaning you don't have a universal set of views with respect to what Somalia should look like in the future. So we want to get a better idea about that certainly as one factor before we provide any response to the letter or we have any more definitive judgment about this group. I think at this point I would just leave it as we're reserving judgment."

McCormack was asked about the Islamists having said that they reject any foreign peacekeepers come in to help stabilize the country and enable the transitional government to be more active.

McCormack said "I'm not aware of anybody who's proposing UN peacekeepers in Somalia."

Previous Stories:
  Abul-Gheit: Egypt follows developments in Somalia   (6/12/2006)
  US conference on Somalia, Islamists not invited   (6/10/2006)
  AU president: US should not support to warlords in Somalia   (6/7/2006)
  Parliamentary elections held September 29 in Somalia region   (10/4/2005)

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