Friday March 18, 2005 10:46 PM
By RODRIQUE NGOWI
Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The Somali parliament affirmed its rejection of peacekeepers from neighboring countries on Friday, despite a vote that ended with lawmakers-in-exile exchanging blows and drew condemnation from the country's prime minister.
Television footage on Thursday showed Kenyan police intervening to stop the turmoil in the Nairobi hotel where the lawmakers voted and fought using clubs, chairs and walking sticks. Some legislators were later seen with blood oozing from their heads.
Nevertheless, the vote was legal and binding, and only troops from countries that do not share borders with Somalia can participate in the force planned to secure its transitional government, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, parliament's speaker, told The Associated Press on Friday. As he spoke, two dozen Somalis marched in Nairobi to protest the parliamentary decision.
Somali ministers, Islamic clerics, and the U.S. State Department have all said sending troops from neighboring countries would derail fragile efforts to end a 14-year civil war in the Horn of Africa nation.
Somalia has been without a central government since clan-based warlords overthrew the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. They then turned on each other, sinking the nation of 7 million into anarchy.
Somalia's government and parliament are based in Kenya because the Somali capital, Mogadishu, is considered unsafe. The peacekeeping force has been proposed as part of plans for the government to return home.
But demonstrators and faction leaders in Somalia have repeatedly said they are prepared to shed blood if troops from neighboring Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya are deployed as part of the interim force that will go to Somalia ahead of a fuller African Union peacekeeping force.
Ethiopia supported Somali factions with money and weapons in the civil war that started in 1991, and some Somali lawmakers fear its troops could seek to advance Ethiopian interests.
Late Thursday, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said the vote rejecting peacekeepers from neighboring countries was unconstitutional and accused powerful warlords-turned-Cabinet ministers and their allies of sabotaging efforts to restore order in Somalia.
The speaker disagreed, saying parliament was within its mandate.
``We will not be a rubber stamp. We will be a very effective parliament that interprets and reflects the will and the wishes of the Somali people,'' Aden said.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed thanked supporters of efforts to restore order in Somalia and asked for additional help. Reacting to Thursday's brawl, Yusuf appealed for ``a peaceful and constructive dialogue ... so that we all best serve our people, in particular those who are in need and vulnerable.''
Regional leaders trying to bring calm to Somalia said Friday they were still planning to send peacekeepers from neighboring Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti - but not in the first phase.
Cabinet ministers from the seven nations of the east African Intergovernmental Authority on Development, known as IGAD and dedicated to regional cooperation and progress, met in Nairobi on Thursday and Friday to consider peacekeeping in Somalia. In their final communique, the ministers offered a total of 6,800 peacekeepers, first from Sudan and Uganda, followed by troops from the African Union, and only then by Ethiopian, Kenyan and Djibouti.