KENYA/SOMALIA: Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi says government to set up Baghdad-style Green Zone in Mogadishu

Record ID: 360721

  • Title: KENYA/SOMALIA: Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi says government to set up Baghdad-style Green Zone in Mogadishu
  • Date: 14th August 2007
  • Summary: DEAD JOURNALIST ON THE GROUND INJURED JOURNALIST TALKING ON PHONE
  • Embargoed: 29th August 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAC8827GPL839TNDPWXCFWEDE3T
  • Story Text: As the violence in Mogadishu intensifies, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi says he is seeking to create a security zone in the city to protect officials and foreign visitors from insurgent attacks.
    The Somali government is trying to create a Baghdad-style Green Zone, in Mogadishu to protect foreigners and other officials at risk of attack, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said on Tuesday (August 14).
    Hundreds of people have been killed by mortar and rocket attacks and firefight in Mogadishu since Somalia's Ethiopian-backed interim government ousted Islamist fighters in December, sparking an insurgency that has forced hundreds of thousands to flee.
    In an interview with Reuters in Nairobi, the Somali premier also accused U.S.-based Human Rights Watch of "abusing" his government and siding with radical Islamists in a report alleging war crimes against Mogadishu's population.
    Insurgents have been fighting Gedi's government, and its Ethiopian military allies, since Islamists were toppled from Mogadishu at the end of 2006 after a brief, six-month rule.
    Gedi said to counter the threat, a security zone was being set up in the bullet-scarred coastal capital.
    "At the moment the government security agencies are trying to create a green zone where international community workers and also those vulnerable can stay for their security purposes so efforts are underway and I hope that it will achieve positive results very soon," Gedi told Reuters television.
    Gedi said government forces were winning the battle against insurgents and were now involved in "cleaning up" some 200-300 hardcore fighters left in Mogadishu and its surroundings.
    Citing the assassination of two prominent journalists and several government ministers at the weekend, however, Gedi said he was not under-estimating the risk.
    While the world was rushing to put together a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur, in Sudan, "I feel reluctance" from the U.N. Security Council on Somalia, Gedi said.
    His government, set up in 2005 in the 14th attempt to restore central rule to the Horn of Africa nation since the 1991 ouster of a military dictator, wants the AU mission to be expanded quickly then transformed into a U.N. operation.
    But the Security Council's peacekeeping department had still not sent an assessment mission to Somalia, he said.
    "I think it's appropriate to ask the security members states or the United Nations why they are giving so much emphasis on Darfur and not to Somalia," Gedi added.
    Gedi was angry at a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Monday (August 13), saying his troops and their Ethiopian allies were responsible -- together with insurgents -- for widespread crimes against Mogadishu residents during this year's fighting/ "It seems according to my opinion that the Human Rights Watch or groups are on line with opportunistic people who are not willing for any government for Somalia they want to keep Somalia in a vacuum to be a safe haven for terrorists activities and that is not acceptable, we don't request them to hide what the government is doing whether good or bad but they are always focusing on the negative aspect and trying loopholes to criticise the government," Gedi added.
    He also said they had also ignored crimes by the Islamic Courts during their rule of Mogadishu, including killing and displacing people, destroying property, denying women's rights, using child soldiers, and banning cinema and sports-viewing.
    Gedi said an under-staffed African Union (AU) mission in Mogadishu -- which has just 1,600 Ugandan soldiers instead of its intended 8,000 men -- needed to be urgently bolstered.
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