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A Somali warlord said in Nairobi Wednesday that the dispute within some of the Somali major clans over the selection of the remaining members of parliament (MPs) is threatening to scuttle the two-year old Somalia National Reconciliation Conference.
Leader of the Somali Reconciliation and Reconstruction Council and a key presidential candidate, Hussein Aideed, gave the warning here at a news conference against unfair selection of MPs which he said will jeopardize the peace process and undermine the 275-member parliament.
"Some of the representatives of the IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) neighbor states have ignored the rules of procedure, binding them to abstain from interference in the selection process and that has caused the problems we are now facing with some of the delegates ready to walk out of the conference because their wishes have been ignored," Aideed told reporters.
A total of 206 members of the Somali Transitional National Assembly, including 16 women, took the oath of office on Sunday in Nairobi, where the Somalia reconciliation conference has been held. However, Aideed said that after consultations with the IGAD Facilitation Committee that is spearheading the talks, it was found that more than 50 members of parliament sworn in over the weekend were selected contrary to the laid down procedures. "The IGAD officials have so far accepted that some MPs were irregularly put into the list and sworn in on Sunday," claimed Aideed.
"If the (IGAD) arbitration committee ignores this fact, the envisaged Transitional Federal Government to be formed is doomed and this chance to bring peace and stability to Somalia will be lost as the previous one," warned Aideed, who controls parts of the capital Mogadishu and central Somalia.
Aideed is the son of the late Somali General Mohammed Farah Aideed, who US forces vainly tried to capture in 1993. Now Aideed is a US citizen and served with the US military before returning home to lead the United Somali Congress/Somali National Alliance faction after the death of his father in 1996.
Aideed's claims have been backed by delegates from the northwestern self-declared Republic of Puntland who have also threatened to quit talks unless the mediators move in to resolve the disputes over unfair selection process.
Somalia descended into chaos after clan-based factions ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, transforming the country of 7 million people into a patchwork of fiefdoms.
The IGAD-sponsored Somali National Reconciliation Conference began in October 2002 in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret, and was moved to Nairobi in February 2003.
IGAD groups Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda.
(Xinhua News Agency August 26, 2004)
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