Sunday August 22, 2004 10:31 AM
By TOM MALITI
Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - In a key step to ending Somalia's 13-year civil war, regional foreign ministers held last-minute talks Sunday with Somalian factional leaders to ensure all members of a transitional parliament were chosen in time for an inauguration ceremony.
Somalian delegates to a peace conference here have so far selected 205 of 275 representatives to the assembly, said Kenyan diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat, chief mediator at the talks.
In January Somalia's warlords and traditional leaders okayed a charter for a transitional government as almost two years of negotiations in Kenya to end fighting in the Horn of Africa nation entered their final stage.
Based on a clan system, the transitional parliament will have a five-year term.
Regional foreign affairs ministers were negotiating with a major holdout clan to select its representatives to the transitional parliament and also iron out differences with other clans ahead of a scheduled swearing-in ceremony in the afternoon, Kiplagat told The Associated Press.
``I think we should be up to 230 to 240 members'' later Sunday, Kiplagat said. ``The process is on and we're following the road map we set.''
He said if all 275 members had not been selected by the time of the ceremony, the ministers would decide whether to go on with the ceremony which is set to take place in the United Nations compound in Nairobi.
Somalia descended into chaos after the faction leaders who ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 turned on each other, transforming the country of 7 million people into a patchwork of fiefdoms. It now has no effective central government, despite an attempt in 2000 by Somali elders, businessmen and religious leaders to form a transitional national government.
That government never controlled more than a small portion of Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia and its mandate expired in August 2003.