England - World powers gather in London on Thursday for a major
conference on Somalia, with recent glimmers of hope overshadowed by a
litany of woes including al-Qaeda-linked militants, piracy and famine.
US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the UN chief Ban Ki-moon and others
will join Somali leaders in a bid to find a solution to the unrest in
Somalia that has dragged in the international community since 1991.
British
Prime Minister David Cameron, who is hosting the conference, said the
strategy was to "try to get the whole of the world to get behind the
efforts of the Somali people themselves".
"I'm convinced that the
international community can help create a breakthrough," he told
members of the Somali community in London on Monday.
Foreign
Secretary William Hague outlined the scale of the challenge, saying that
Somalia had been "the world's most failed state for the last 20 years"
and a potential base for terrorism.
The conference comes on the
back of some progress in Somalia, including a weekend deal on the future
government, combined with some military successes against the Shabaab
movement of Islamist rebels.
The Shabaab were driven out of
Mogadishu six months ago to the south and west, and appear weakened by a
combined onslaught by African Union-backed government forces, with the
Kenyan army active in the south and Ethiopian in the west.
But in
a sign of the troubles ahead, Osama bin Laden's successor Ayman
al-Zawahiri announced last week that Shabaab fighters had officially
joined ranks with the al-Qaeda network.
Global centre for piracy
Britain,
with its large Somali diaspora community, has in particular warned of
the dangers of what it says are foreign fighters training in terror
camps run by the Shabaab.
Somalia's chaos has also made it a
global centre for piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, but the
international fleet mobilized in 2008 recorded a slight reduction in
attacks last year against merchant ships.
Famine zones in Somalia
declared by the United Nations last August were announced to have
improved to emergency conditions earlier this month, but despite massive
international aid efforts, conditions remain grim.
On the
political front, Somalia's president, the presidents of the breakaway
Puntland and Galmudug regions, and the commander of the anti-Shabaab
militia Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa signed a UN-backed deal on Saturday.
The
accord signed in the northern town of Garowe proposes a parliamentary
system for anarchic Somalia to replace the country's fragile
transitional body, whose mandate expires in August.
Ban on Sunday
urged the Somali leaders to engage in "full and timely implementation"
of the deal and it is likely to be scrutinised at the conference on
Thursday.
"We want to ensure that the process is the product of
genuine consultation," stressed a senior British diplomat, wary of the
dozen previous aborted attempts at reaching an agreement.
Huge financial aid
But
the delegates at the conference, which will also gather the African
Union, the European Union and the Arab League, face conflicting demands
from both Somalians and the different countries affected by the conflict
there.
Uganda - which with Burundi forms the backbone of Amisom,
the AU force in Somalia - wants to mobilise sustainable funding for an
enlarged force of 17 000 troops, an increase of from the current UN-set
target of 12 000.
Many contributors from the EU, which has already pumped in €307m of funding, will demand guarantees of political progress.
Jerry
Rawlings, the AU's special envoy to Somalia and former Ghanaian
president, called on the UN to "pick up the bill, or bring on board
others who will help with the bill".
It is all a far cry from the
"Marshall Plan" called for earlier this month by Somali Prime Minister
Ali Mohamed Abdiwell, referring to the huge financial aid package lent
to Europe by the US following World War II.
A follow-up summit is already scheduled for June in Istanbul.
-SAPA
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