Al-Sharq al-Awsat (in Arabic) — Report by Khalid Mahmud in Cairo: “Head of Courts: Ethiopian Occupation Hinders Achieving National Accord in Somalia. Arab League Denies Its Absence from Conference and Says It Provided $200,000”

Shaykh Hasan Tahir Oweys, head of the Shura Council of the Islamic Courts in Somalia, has said that there is no hope of achieving any national reconciliation between the Somali disputing parties as long as the Ethiopian forces, which back the transitional authority, led by Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, stay in the country.

In exclusive statements to Al-Sharq al-Awsat via telephone from an unknown location inside Somalia yesterday, he said that “the continuation of the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia hinders any serious and real efforts to achieve national accord and end the civil war,” which has been witnessed by his country since 1991. Oweys noted that the resistance against the Ethiopian forces will not stop until they withdraw from the Somali territories. He said that Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi does not have the right to seek to impose his political agenda and his own ambitions on the Somalis.

Oweys challenged Zenawi to declare the real number of losses of the Ethiopian forces in Somalia. He said that Zenawi’s belief that achieving a quick victory against the militias of the Islamic Courts would end the popular resistance to the Ethiopian military presence was wrong.

Oweys stressed that the Ethiopian Government cannot reveal the real number of its dead, prisoners, and wounded in Somalia in order to cover up what he called its total failure to subdue the will of the Somali people and force them to accept the presence of Ethiopian forces on their territories.

Oweys, who is hiding due to attempts by elements from the Ethiopian, Somali, and Kenyan intelligence services, backed by the CIA, to arrest him or discover his hideout, reiterated his rejection of the reconciliation conference, which is currently being held in the Somali capital, Mogadishu and which entered its fifth day yesterday. Oweys noted that this conference is not binding for the popular resistance or the leaders of the Islamic Courts and is being held under the Ethiopian occupation. He said: “It is a conference that aims to consolidate the Ethiopian occupation and give Zenawi the upper hand in deciding and running the country’s affairs.”

He added: We will resist this, and we will not allow it, by all means and ways. This is our right, and the teachings of our Islamic religion dictate this to us. We cannot yield or be weak in facing what is happening.

In response to reports, which came from the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, and which said that Burundi plans to send peacekeeping forces to Somalia as part of the mission of the African Union [AU] there, Oweys said: We have a clear position, which is that we are against any attempt to seek the help of foreigners. Our history is the best evidence of the failure of wagering on the success of the idea of seeking the help of international forces. Oweys was referring to the miserable failure of the US forces in the 1990s under the so-called “Operation Restore Hope in Somalia.”

A delegation from the Burundian Army is expected to make a working visit to Somalia within the coming week to hold talks with Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf and officials in charge of the AU peacekeeping forces to pave the way for deploying a Burundian force made up of 1828 soldiers to join the Ugandan peacekeeping forces, which have been there since March 2007.

Informed Somali and African sources told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the Burundian forces are now actually ready to move to Somalia as soon as possible and perhaps by the end of this month or in the beginning of next month. The sources noted that Kenya, the United States, the Netherlands, and France have promised to provide logistical and financial assistance to the African peacekeeping forces to enhance their ability to perform the tasks assigned to them.

In another development, the Arab League yesterday officially denied its absence from the Somali national reconciliation conference, which is currently held in Mogadishu. It attributed the delay in the arrival of its delegation in the Somali capital until yesterday to security reasons.

Ambassador Samir Husni, official in charge of Somalia’s affairs at the Arab League, told Al-Sharq al-Awsat yesterday that a group of international representatives, including Ambassador Salim al-Khusaybi, was scheduled to travel from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, at the head of a delegation of the Arab League to Mogadishu on board a UN plane to attend the conference. However, the delegation received security warnings of the existence of dangers on the plane. Therefore, the flight was postponed until a later time. He noted that Al-Khusaybi is on his way to Mogadishu despite what he described as the poor international attendance of this conference, which was not attended by the representatives of regional organizations, except for Muhammad Ali Fum, envoy of the AU to Somalia.

Husni announced that Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa, based on an official invitation he received from the Somali authorities, has decided to participate with a large Arab delegation in the reconciliation conference, just like the regional and international delegations, and in order to affirm the Arab League’s attention to achieving national accord between all Somali factions. Husni revealed that the Arab League has taken financial measures in this respect to transfer $200,000 to the account of the UN Development Program, which is in charge of spending on the reconciliation conference and financing it, as a first installment, while other installments will follow in the near future and in light of current developments in Somalia.