A New Yemeni Initiative: Helping Resolve the Somali Quagmire [Archives:1998/35/Front Page]

archive
August 31 1998

A Yemeni initiative has been unleashed. Mr. Abdul-Qader Ba-Jammal, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, is in South Africa at the head of the Yemeni delegation to the Summit of Non-Aligned Nations. He said he will discuss with his counterparts in Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya in a new initiative aimed at resolving the Somali debacle. “We feel that the time is right to push ahead with a solution to this problem,” the minister said prior to his departure.
The initiative has been discussed with Hussain Aideed, the strongest of the Somali warlords who just concluded a one-week visit to Sanaa.
It involves three aspects:
1) To hold a national reconciliation conference which brings together all Somali factions;
2) To put together a national police force drawing from all Somali tribes; and
3) To arrange with the Arab League to finance the police force from its fund.

——
[archive-e:35-v:1998-y:1998-d:1998-08-31-p:./1998/iss35/front.htm]