By DPA
Nairobi : Delegates to Sunday’s National Reconciliation Conference in the embattled Somali capital Mogadishu will likely be welcomed with grenades and gunfire as organisers put the final touches on what may be the last best hope for peace in the anarchic country.
With the days leading up to the event marked by bloody violence, sceptics say it’s amazing the conference is being held at all.
The Horn of Africa nation was plunged into anarchy in 1991, after warlords toppled dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and then turned on each other.
The European Union-backed conference is seen as the only way to pull Somalia back from the brink, again.
Observers say the transitional government may be ill prepared to hold such a large-scale meeting, which is set to bring together 1,000 delegates to hash out some political situation to the country’s perpetual lawlessness.
“If the government wants to use the opportunity as a fake, to save face with the international community, it won’t work,” Italy’s special envoy for Somalia Mario Raffaelli told DPA, after returning from the volatile capital.
The opening day is expected to be full of formalities and handshakes, with delegates set to obtain an agenda and then split off into working groups. The entire conference is scheduled to last 45 days, but Raffaelli said this time frame isn’t likely.
During his visit, Raffaelli said several parties to the conflict agreed to arrange a security perimeter around the conference’s venue but, he added, its implementation wasn’t hashed out.
“We still don’t know if European representatives will be able to attend the opening for security reasons,” Raffaelli said. In Somalia Wednesday, Raffaelli said he and other EU envoys would be back Sunday.
Security is not the only roadblock to making the meeting meaningful. A chunk of the Hawiye clan, Mogadishu’s largest, has vowed to boycott the conference.
Without the Hawiye, which controls much of the turbulent capital and was a significant part of the Islamist group, which ruled most of the country for the last half of 2006, the conference may lack the legitimacy it needs to accomplish anything.
Originally slated for April, the National Reconciliation Conference was postponed until June after two brutally violent flare-ups that left at least 1,300 dead and uprooted up to 400,000 from the bullet-scarred capital.
Then in June, with insecurity blamed on remnants of the Islamist group still rocking the capital, the transitional government led by Abdullahi Yusuf said it would delay the meet until July 15 because of logistical reasons, mainly because the venue was not ready yet.
But this time around, Yusuf said, “even if a nuclear bomb explodes in Mogadishu, the conference will happen as scheduled”.
And while the circumstances may not be perfect now, with groups opting out and violence a daily occurrence, Raffaelli said the stalling must come to an end.
“In some way we have to start if we are to show there is a real process toward peace, even though the security conditions are not in place at all. It’s not easy to foresee what will happen.”