Somalia: Talks offing to solve problem
Published on Monday 7th April 2008Keniya, Apr 7: Aid agencies are to meet the Somali prime minister in an attempt to improve aid deliveries to the war-ravaged country.
The United Nations describes it as one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world. The Somali leader, Nur Adde, will meet aid agency representatives in Nairobi, in neighbouring Kenya, BBC report said. The United Nations says there are nearly two million Somalis in need of food aid, health care or shelter. One of the most serious crisis points is around the Somali capital Mogadishu. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled fighting in the city over the past year. The meeting between the aid officials and the Somali prime minister is taking place in Nairobi because Somalia is simply too dangerous. I was briefly in the capital Mogadishu last week and saw how large sections of the city had been depopulated. In the past year hundreds of thousands of people have fled fighting there between the forces of the transitional government and a mixture of Islamist and Somali clan-based insurgents. The meeting in Nairobi on aid delivery takes place while the UN is also brokering tentative talks aimed at finding a political solution to Somalia's long running conflicts. That is a mammoth task. Somalia has been at war for decades and parts of the country have even broken away to form autonomous regions. It is one of the most dangerous places in the world, but the UN diplomats involved in talking to the government and the opposition say the humanitarian and political crisis in Somalia is so serious that inaction is not an option. The wars in Somalia began in earnest during the Cold War period when the Americans and the Soviets became deeply involved in the Horn of Africa. But after the cold war ended Somali clans took up arms. The latest conflict involves neighbouring Ethiopia, which backs the weak though internationally-recognised transitional government. The Ethiopians are fighting an Islamist insurgency which the United States says has links with al-Qaeda. The Somali Islamists deny this, saying they are fighting an Ethiopian occupation.