IRIN Web Special: Somali National Peace Conference

Osman Jama "Kallun", a former Minister under ex-president Mohammed Siad Barre

Osman Jama "Kallun", a former Minister under ex-president Mohammed Siad Barre, told IRIN war criminals must be dealt with for there to be a proper reconciliation process in Somalia:

"I defected in 1989 when I was the Minister of Public Works and Housing, because of the brutality of the Siad Barre regime - especially towards Issaks. I joined the Somali National Movement (fighting in the northwest) and became a central committee member. My family got asylum in Britain and I lived in Burao after 1991. I refused to become a minister under the first Somaliland president Abdulrahman Tur, because I opposed the secession of Somaliland...

I said publicly at Arta that we have to consider the issue of war criminals. If we continue everything on a clan basis we don't deal with the issue of war criminals; they are protected by their clan...

I think the future government should form a committee on war criminals and reparations. The clans cannot deal with it, because the criminals just say they were following orders. General Gani - who is here at the conference - was in Hargeisa as the army general from 1980-1986. He was very brutal, carrying out summary executions, imprisonment, and confiscating property.

If every Issak was to name one war criminal, he would be at the front of the queue. General Morgan replaced him, and he used to take people from the streets and kill them. There is also Colonel Anjeh who was in Mogadishu. In 1989 he took 46 young Issaks - teachers, doctors, engineers - and shot them on the beach. One survived...

At Arta, we are hoping there will be some consensus. Every clan is represented. All regions should be given some sort of decentralised autonomy, and be able to elect its own governor, its own mayor, and make its own laws - as long as they don't contradict a national constitution. Mogadishu will have to be a neutral territory with a balanced national army... Here we have good, popular representation. The warlords are now the weakest group in the conference. We want people to unite along geographical, regional lines, and professional roots, not clanism.

Hassan Abshire Farah, Chairman of the Somali Peace Conference

Hassan Abshire Farah, a former Mayor of Mogadishu, was appointed Somalia's ambassador to Germany in 1988 under former president Mohamed Siad Barre. He had also served as ambassador to Japan. After the Somali state collapsed in 1991 he moved his family to the United States, but returned to his native region in the northeast.

When Puntland was declared an autonomous region in 1998 he was appointed Minister of Interior by leader Colonel Abdulahi Yusuf. But he resigned in April when Abdulahi Yusuf rejected the Djibouti-hosted process, saying it would lead to conflict. People from Puntland were refused permission to attend; after there were popular demonstrations in support of the talks, the administration mounted road blocks to control movement and made arrests.

Hassan Abshire was elected conference chairman 15 June. He said in an interview with IRIN that he knew Abdulahi Yusuf "very well" and did not expect him to come to Arta:

Q: Is it a problem that some faction leaders have rejected the conference and remain in Somalia?

A: We need all Somalis to come here, because we don't want opposition when we finish the process. So yes, we want the faction leaders to come. We appealed several times for them to come to Djibouti, especially Kanyare, Abdullahi Yusuf, Hussein Aideed, and Egal. We need all the warlords to come and to sit with us here and try to solve our differences in a peaceful way. We want to establish that dialogue.

Read the full interview

David Stephen, the Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia

David Stephen, special representative of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has been an active observer of the Djibouti-hosted Somali peace process since February, when practical preparations were first made to hold the peace talks in Arta, some 30 km south of Djibouti city.

Read the David Stephen interviews:

• IRIN interview of 29 August 2000
  When Somali President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan was inaugurated on 27 August, Stephen delivered a special message from the UN Secretary-General - who warned that the task of rebuilding the nation was "formidable". Stephen told IRIN he sees the latest developments as an important step forward.
• IRIN interview of 8 May 2000, Part I
  The first instalment of an interview with David Stephen, the Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia. Stephen spoke to IRIN about the Somali peace talks before leaving for the Djibouti venue, Arta. There is hope that the clan-based talks, initiated by Djibouti President Omar Guelleh, will succeed in establishing a new government - with or without the armed faction leaders
  Part II, 9 May 2000
  The second instalment of an interview with David Stephen, the Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia. Stephen spoke to IRIN about the Somali peace talks before leaving for the Djibouti venue, Arta
• UNDP Somalia interview of 24 March 2000
  On Tuesday, 21 March, a diverse group of Somalis kicked off a five-day meeting at the Sheraton hotel in Djibouti’s capital to talk about the upcoming Somali National Peace Conference. David Stephen spoke to the UN in Somalia newspage about what was happening