Somali Islamist Sees Clear Timetable for Ethiopian Withdrawal in Agreement

Somali Islamist opposition leader Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed says hisgroup signed a U.N.-mediated peace agreement with Somalia's interimgovernment last week because the accord provides a specific timetablefor an Ethiopian troop withdrawal from Somalia. As VOA CorrespondentAlisha Ryu reports from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi, the pressureis now on the international community to rapidly deploy a stabilizationforce to make the military withdrawal possible.   

Sheik SharifSheik Ahmed, who led the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation ofSomalia delegation, says the peace agreement was signed last week inDjibouti because it included a timetable for the Ethiopian military toleave Somalia.

The opposition leader says the agreementclearly states that Ethiopian troops must leave Somalia and be replacedby troops friendly to Somalia within 120 days. Ahmed says obtaining aspecific timetable for withdrawal was the main purpose of entering intotalks with the government.

In late 2006, neighboring Ethiopialed a U.S.-supported military campaign to oust Somali Islamists frompower and to install the U.N.-backed secular transitional federalgovernment. The move sparked an Islamist-led anti-Ethiopian,anti-government insurgency, which has created what the United Nationscalls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.   

Hardlinersin Ahmed's opposition group, led by Islamist leader Sheik Hassan DahirAweys in Asmara, Eritrea, boycotted the talks in Djibouti. They saythe accord aimed at protecting the Ethiopian occupation in Somalia.  

Westernobservers note the timetable for an Ethiopian withdrawal depends on thedeployment of a U.N. stabilization force and creation of a force thatis sufficient to secure the country. What would constitute asufficient force is not spelled out in the agreement.

Supportersof Aweys and leaders of an al-Qaida-linked Somali group called theShabab have vowed to continue fighting against Ethiopia and the Somaligovernment. The number of insurgent attacks in the Somali capitalMogadishu and elsewhere have surged in the past week.  
 
SheikSharif Sheik Ahmed says he is in talks with opponents in Asmara to finda way to implement a three-month cease-fire, but he says theinternational community needs to play its role, too, in the peaceprocess.

Speaking to VOA on the sidelines of a three-day meetingof the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Kampala, SomaliForeign Minister Ali Jama Ahmed says his government is vigorouslylobbying nations to support the accord and to offer peacekeeping troops.

"Weare lobbying among the OIC and all other members of the United Nations,especially the members of the Security Council, so that the SecurityCouncil authorizes the stabilization force as soon as possible becausetime is not on our side," he said.

Deploying a U.N. force inSomalia within the next four months may pose the biggest challenge tothe international community, which is struggling to fulfill commitmentsmade to a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in the Darfur regionof western Sudan.  

Six months after the mission was launched,only a fraction of the 26,000 peacekeepers promised have been deployedand much-needed equipment and supplies have not yet arrived.