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Courts fighters sit outside Villa Baidoa as Mogadishu's last warlord surrenders. (Reuters)
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MOGADISHU — Somalia's interim government decided on Friday, July 14, to boycott peace talks due to take place in Sudan at the weekend in protest at alleged ceasefire violations by the Islamic Courts movement, which controls the capital Mogadishu.
"It was a cabinet decision that we postpone the talks because of the violations of the Khartoum agreement," Deputy Prime Minister Hussein Aideed told Reuters by telephone from the government's headquarters in Baidoa.
He was referring to the two sides' agreement during a first round of talks in Sudan on June 22 to stop military campaigns.
The government says the courts' subsequent pushes against remaining warlords around Mogadishu, and their announcement of a parallel national administration, broke that accord.
"It is very difficult to trust the Islamic Courts because they have not changed their violent ways," added Aideed.
The two sides agreed to meet again on July 15 to further thrash out security and governance arrangements but since then the courts have further expanded their territory, drawing charges they violated the deal.
Just this week, the courts vanquished the lone holdout warlord in Mogadishu, took control of the city's main port and demanded that all government property and facilities be turned over to them.
Setback
The move was a setback to diplomatic efforts to avert armed confrontation between the Western-backed government based in a provincial town and the courts, which took the capital and a swathe of southern Somalia from US-backed warlords last month.
The courts, led by hardline cleric Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, say they have been mopping up remnants of pro-warlord militias to ensure peace for the population, and an aide said they did not understand the delay in holding the talks.
"We are ready for the talks and were planning to leave...we don't know why they were postponed," said Abdirahim Isse, an ally of senior courts leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
Somalia has been without central rule since 1991 when president Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted by warlords.
Ethiopian troops have crossed into Somalia to back the government against the Islamists, increasing fears of a broader conflict.
The Arab League-brokered talks on power-sharing in Khartoum, set for Saturday, were specifically aimed at defusing that.
"It's a real blow that they're not even going to meet each other," a Western diplomat who tracks Somalia told Reuters.
"What's crucial now is to find out if they are going to meet at a later date, or if the negotiations are off altogether."
Hesham Youssef, chief of staff for the Arab League secretary general, expressed hope the talks would soon be back on track.
"The issue is not black and white ... These kinds of negotiations are usually associated with difficulties," he told Reuters.
A major sticking point is the proposed deployment of foreign peacekeepers in Somalia.
The government says they are needed to bolster its limited authority, while the courts say that is unnecessary.
On Thursday, the UN Security Council expressed for the first time its willingness to consider the long-delayed deployment, showing readiness to ease an arms ban to enable the interim government to build up its own security forces.
The United States and other Western nations, along with the United Nations, had backed the Arab League initiative to bring the courts and the government together in a bid to prevent them from battling each other.
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