DJIBOUTI—Somalia's government said it hoped for a peace deal with the opposition at U.N. talks that began on Monday, but Islamist insurgents boycotted them and said they would keep fighting.
The United Nations Security Council opened talks in neighbouring Djibouti in a bid to persuade Somalia's disparate factions to help end conflict in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
Somalia's Information Minister Ahmed Abdisalan told reporters an agreement in Djibouti would directly improve the security situation, despite the absence from the talks of al-Shabaab Islamist militants and some factions of the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS).
"I believe that when the Somali government and the ARS group who are here agree on a cessation of hostilities that we can influence and have an impact on the ground," he said.
At least 6,500 people were killed last year and more than 1 million Somalis displaced by fighting between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government troops.
Hundreds of thousands have died of war, famine and disease since the collapse of a dictatorship brought anarchy in 1991. U.S. and other Western security officials fear al Qaeda could exploit Somalia's instability and lack of governance to create a safe haven there.
Diplomats from the 15-nation U.N. Security Council, on the first leg of a tour of African trouble spots, met Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf and other members of the interim government based in Somalia. Later they were to hold talks with Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the head of the Eritrea-based ARS and other members of the opposition alliance.
'Great Start'
South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said he was not bothered by the absence of some hardline factions from the talks, which are set to run until June 10.
"You're never going to have all the parties involved from the word go," he said. "You have to start somewhere and this is a great start."
Kumalo said the council could offer an important carrot to Somalia in the form of U.N. peacekeepers. Last month it passed a resolution that said it would consider sending U.N. troops to Somalia to replace African Union peacekeepers if the political atmosphere and security situation improved.
The Security Council meetings are in Djibouti as near-daily attacks in Somalia make it too dangerous to meet there.
On Sunday, insurgents fired mortars at a plane set to take President Yusuf to Djibouti, but he was unharmed.
The divided opposition and failure of previous attempts at negotiating peace are among the reasons Somalia experts are pessimistic about the chances of a breakthrough in Djibouti.
A first session of U.N.-mediated talks was held in Djibouti in mid-May, but there was no face-to-face meeting between the government and opposition.
Some Somali opposition officials have dismissed the talks and say Sheikh Sharif and the others attending do not represent them. They set the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops as a precondition for talks with the government.
President Yusuf told the council that Ethiopia's withdrawal was "contingent on the deployment of the (U.N.) peacekeeping force and the cessation of hostilities".
Mukhtar Ali Robow, a spokesman for al Shabaab, which the United States says has links to al Qaeda, ridiculed Islamists attending the talks, telling local media that "they are afraid to go into the list of terrorists, but our local mujahideen will continue the fighting."
The Somali talks in Djibouti mark the start of a 10-day tour of regional hot-spots that will bring diplomats from the 15-nation Security Council to Sudan's Darfur region, southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Ivory Coast.
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