Delegates at Somali peace talks wait for PM Gedi

Mugadishu, Sunday, July 15, 2007 Simba Radio

The start of peace talks in Somalia was delayed for several hours on Sunday as hundreds of clan elders, politicians and former warlords waited for the arrival of Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi.

"The prime minister is flying in from Kenya and will stop in Baidoa first to pick up the speaker of parliament," an official working with the conference organisers told Reuters as delegates milled around his office waiting for accreditation cards.

Security was stepped up across the capital Mogadishu in preparation for the meeting at a heavily guarded former police headquarters.

Remnants of an ousted Islamist movement blamed for almost daily roadside blasts, suicide bombings and assassinations have vowed to attack the conference.

On Sunday, government troops and their Ethiopian military allies stopped cars and checked pedestrians at key junctions from tanks and trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns.

The meeting, which has already been postponed twice because of security fears, is seen as the interim government's best hope of securing peace and strengthening its legitimacy.

The administration has struggled to impose authority on the Horn of Africa nation since ousting the hardline Islamic Courts movement from the coastal capital in late December.

Violence fuelled by bitter clan rivalries has foiled 13 previous attempts to set up central rule in Somalia since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991