Al-Sharq al-Awsat (in Arabic) — Report by Khalid Mahmud in Cairo: “Gunmen Kill Prominent Government Official in Mogadishu. Uways Demands Rejection of Transitional Government’s Request for Peacekeeping Forces”

Officials said yesterday that two Somali gunmen shot dead a prominent government official in Mogadishu and a young man was killed when ammunition left by the African Union’s [AU] peacekeeping force exploded.

The capital Mogadishu saw an escalation of attacks by gunmen who are targeting officials in the transitional government and the latter is blaming the Islamists — which the transitional government was able to overthrow with the help of Ethiopian forces earlier this year after being in control of most of Somalia’s southern areas – for the series of suicide bombings, bomb explosions, and assassinations.  Mohamed Omar, the deputy police chief of the area, told Reuters:  “Two gunmen shot dead the Houroua deputy commissioner.  The two men shot him and fled.”

On his part, Islamic Courts organization leader Shaykh Hassan Dahir Aweys warned the UN Security Council [UNSC] of the consequences of responding to the demands of the transitional authority, which is led by President Abdullahi Yusuf and his Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, for the help of African or international peacekeeping forces. He said the arrival of foreign forces in Somalia’s territories is not in the country’s interest and pledged to fight these forces if they were deployed later on.

He added in statements to Al-Sharq al-Awsat: “Historically, the foreigners never succeeded in achieving peace in our country but were part of the problem. It is better for the international community to leave us to resolve our problems ourselves at first and to be content with its role of backing the reconciliation process and forcing Ethiopia to withdraw its troops.”

Shaykh Aweys pointed out that he addressed an open message to the UNSC and the UN secretary general in May urging them not to send and deploy international forces from the UN or the AU in Somalia, adding that the Somali people would fight them whether they came to back the weak government or continue the Ethiopian forces’ mission.

Shaykh Aweys called for the Ethiopian forces’ departure from Somali territories and said “they are enemies, not friends, and are even the killers of our people, colonizers of our country, and dividers of our nation. No reform is expected from the enemy and only ruin and destruction come from him.”

On his part, Somali Prime Minister Gedi warned the UNSC of the danger of ignoring the current situation his country and also called for speeding up the dispatch of international peacekeeping forces and backing the African peacekeeping ones who are in the country at present.

Gedi asserted to Al-Sharq al-Awsat by telephone that his government wishes that the UNSC would play a bigger role in the Somali crisis in the next stage and pointed out that the UN’s undertaking of the peacekeeping mission in Somalia instead of the AU “is something natural and logical in view of the difficulties impeding the deployment of more African forces.”

He declared his rejection of the reservations about sending international peacekeeping forces to Somalia and said this is the country’s right, like many other countries to which the United Nations had sent forces on similar missions. He said: “They are telling us make peace and then we will come to you later to protect it. This is twisted logic and does not imply a real understanding of the dangerous internal situation in the country.”