18/08/08 (B461) Press TV / Les chefs de guerre somaliens entravent les discussions de paix. Les groupes de l’opposition somalienne ont quitté la salla de conférence pour protester contre la présence de 4 chefs de guerre / Warlords impede Somali peace talks (En Anglais – Info lecteur)

Somali opposition groups have left a meeting with the government to protest the presence of 4 warlords accused of genocide in the peace talks.

The UN-sponsored talks are being held between Somalia’s interim government and opposition groups in Djibouti to reach an ineffectual peace deal aimed at ending the ongoing unrest in Somalia.

Irate oppositions said they were not informed that the four warlords were invited to the peace talks by the United Nations’ envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdalla, who organized the meeting, a Press TV correspondent reported Sunday.

They also vowed that they will not return to the peace talks unless the four – head of the security agency of the Somali government Mohamed Warsamme Darwish, Somali Police Commander Abdi Hassan Awale (Qeybdiid), Commander of Somali Military Saed Dhere and Abdi Fiidow also known as John Bot – are dismissed.

The three-day UN-backed meeting, which started on Saturday, aims at finalizing details of a peace agreement worked out in June between the Somali government and the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, ending the hostilities that have resulted in so many deaths in a civil war that has lasted 30 years.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. In 2006, US-backed Ethiopian troops invaded the country in an attempt to back Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.

Fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces and insurgents has killed thousands of Somalis and displaced more than a million others.