JEDDAH, 23 November 2002 — The Somali peace parley in the Kenyan town of Eldoret was affected by financial constraints after the talks were extended for a further five weeks. The East African Standard reports that the chairman of the technical committee of the African body, the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Elijah Mwangale, admitted recently that IGAD is yet to receive financial pledges from the European Union so that it can facilitate the smooth running of the peace talks.
Mwangale said the first phase of the talks, which ended last week, had already consumed 2.2 million euros and more funds are required to ensure the process is completed smoothly. On the issue of the peace process, he said the international community and especially the United States, wants an established government in Somalia.
The technical committee has proposed a new formula to try and resolve a deadlock over the allocation of delegates’ seats. On Tuesday, the committee proposed that Somalia’s four main clans — Hawiye, Darod, Dir and Rahanweyn — should get 84 seats each. Minorities would get 42 seats while 22 would be kept as optional seats, making a total of 400 as opposed to the 362 seats previously announced.
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A former Somali faction leader, Ali Mahdi Muhammad, has left the peace talks and returned to Mogadishu. On Monday, he told the BBC that the talks were a waste of time and making no progress. Muhammad was the only warlord who attended the Djibouti-sponsored national reconciliation conference in 2000, where the TNG was set up. He accepted a membership of the TNG assembly. He blamed Ethiopia for attempting to influence the talks in favor of the factions it backs.
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More than a thousand hectares of farmland in the Juba Valley in southern Somalia have been inundated by floodwaters, a UN humanitarian source said on Monday. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the situation did not appear grave. “There is flooding, but at this point it is only flash floods,” said a report by the FAO’s Somalia Water and Land Information Management System.
