Wed February 2, 2005 12:57 PM GMT+02:00
By Mohamed Ali Bile
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A team of Somali lawmakers including a powerful warlord flew in to Mogadishu on Wednesday to prepare for the return of a fledgling government formed in the safety of neighbouring Kenya last year, witnesses said.
Traditional dancers swayed and hundreds of onlookers cheered as the legislators drove to a hotel in the centre of the ramshackle capital in a convoy of flatbed trucks mounted with machineguns and manned by militia bodyguards.
"I'm very happy we have received the new government, and we are expecting the new government to disarm the militia. Weapons are the biggest enemy in this country," said Fatima Ali, amid a throng of militiamen and civilians milling about at the hotel.
Her friend, who declined to give her named, agreed. "Weapons are the biggest disease in Somalia."
Created at peace talks across the border because of security problems at home, the transitional federal government aims to end fighting between militias who have ruled Somalia since warlords ousted military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
Diplomats say the re-establishment of the government in Somalia is a key condition for foreign donor funding for its attempts to rebuild an effective national administration.
The government is Somalia's 14th attempt at creating an effective central administration since 1991 -- to date an effort that has been repeatedly torpedoed by warlords who carved the country of about 10 million into clan-based fiefdoms.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed in violence or have died through war-related famine and disease, many during a famine and conflict in the early 1990s that prompted military intervention by U.S. forces and a U.N. mission.
FOUR KILLED IN CONVOY
Witnesses said about 30 members of parliament, including Commerce Minister Muse Sudi Yalahow, flew in to a former military airbase at Balidogle about 40 km (25 miles) outside of the lawless capital at about 11 a.m. local time.
The delegation, led by Second Deputy Speaker Osman Elmi Boqore, drove over a bumpy pot-holed dirt road into Mogadishu guarded by a convoy of trucks mounted with machineguns and manned by militiamen and pulled up at the city's Sahafi Hotel, where a crowd of 500 curious onlookers had gathered.
Four of Muse Sudi's fighters were killed when two vehicles in which they were travelling as part of the convoy overturned at high speed on the way in to the capital, witnesses said.
Muse Sudi is one of several powerful Mogadishu faction leaders serving in the cabinet who will be required to disarm their militias as the new government strives to rebuild a national security force and end clan bloodletting.
U.N. officials and Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi met on Wednesday, and afterward urged international donors "to consider timely support" for the planned return of the government.
A joint communique supported the grass-roots approach to reconciliations being undertaken in conjunction with the return.
Parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan plans to return to Mogadishu on Saturday and Gedi will soon follow with the rest of his 42-member cabinet.
YUSUF'S RETURN
Officials have yet to give a date for the return of President Abdullahi Yusuf, the top official under a transitional constitution, who is from north-central Somalia and seen as an outsider by many in Mogadishu, a city of one million.
Diplomats say Yusuf, an Ethiopian-backed warlord and former soldier, can only establish legitimacy by returning to Somalia quickly and fostering reconciliation between all factions and interest groups as well as reining in the militias.
The government wants to make rapid, eye-catching improvements in the lives of ordinary Somalis to gain their trust. But it has little money, there are no functioning ministries, and anarchy and violence has seeped into all corners of society.
The new government already has enemies, mostly among a small but effective group of Islamist extremists believed by diplomats to have been behind a string of recent assassinations.
Gunmen shot dead a former state security officer Hersi Omar Dhorre in Mogadishu on Monday, the fifth prominent security or education expert murdered in the past three months in killings seen by residents as signs of opposition to the government and its plans to bring in foreign peacekeepers.