JEDDAH, 19 September 2003 — Mogadishu-based faction leader Musse Sudi Yalahow has strongly rejected a transitional federal charter, which was adopted by Somali delegates at the present peace talks in Kenya, media reports said on Wednesday. The delegates adopted the charter on Monday.
“The so-called charter is unacceptable. The talks are dead. The organizers have killed the talks. Therefore, we (opponents of the talks) are thinking of having our own conference inside Somalia,” Yalahow told reporters in Mogadishu.
Somalia’s Transitional National Government President Abdi Qassim Salad and faction leaders Osman Hassan Atto, Barre Hirale and Jama Ali Jama have also rejected the federal charter.
Under the charter, participants of the talks are to form a transitional federal government for Somalia for a four-year term.
Yalahow, who controls some parts of the capital Mogadishu and the neighboring region of Middle Shabelle, accused the sponsors of the talks of hijacking the country’s peace process.
The three member states of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) — Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti — are organizing the eleven-month long talks.
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A Kenyan who worked for a humanitarian church agency operating in Somalia has been murdered, the Nairobi-based East African Standard said on Tuesday.
Oyaw Abdiwahid Okash, a former plumber with the Ministry of Water Resources, was murdered at Damasa, a tiny border town by a gang of Somali militiamen.
The 40-year-old father of five had six bullets pumped into his body while on a mission to repair a damaged water system run by the church organization Adventist Development Relief Agency (Adra).
According to the paper, Okash was traveling with a dozen other people in the border between Somalia and Kenya when their car was ambushed by gunmen.
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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said that a group of illegal immigrants are feared drowned after smugglers forced them off a boat at gunpoint.
The UNHCR said on Tuesday that the boat was sailing from Bossasso town in northeastern Somalia to Yemen when those in charge of the boat forced 161 immigrants overboard with iron rods, wooden clubs and threats of armed violence.
“They (the smugglers) panicked and become extremely ruthless and threw everyone out,” said the refugee agency, adding that it was unusual that so many of those on board were Ethiopians, as the route tended to be used by Somalis.
Rescue workers are still searching for 29 refugees. The incident, which happened at the end of last week, is the second such event in the space of three weeks.
At least 12 people drowned in the last boating tragedy. According to survivors, about 3,000 Ethiopians were waiting in Bossasso for a crossing to Yemen.
The UNHCR said armed traffickers forced 30 Somalis overboard last month as they approached the Yemeni coast. At least 12 drowned.
Another 30 were reported missing by survivors who were rescued by a Spanish trawler after their boat lost power, leaving them adrift without water for 10 days.
In April, more than 90 people making the crossing were reported to have drowned when their boat sank.
