Somalia signs ‘road map’ for reforms demanded by West

SOMALIA’S leaders yesterday agreed an ambitious timetable of reforms that pin the failed state to holding elections within less than a year.

The “road map” also demands refreshed efforts to combat Islamist insurgents, a constitutional referendum and extra transparency over how millions of pounds of donor money are spent.

Signing the document at a ceremony in Mogadishu, president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said the move would be “the end of the long-running crisis in Somalia”.

The country is plagued by famine in six of the eight regions in its south, and has had no effective national government since it descended into civil war in 1991. Mr Sharif’s “transitional federal government” is seen by many diplomats and analysts as perhaps the best chance to form a country-wide administration in more than a decade.

Senior delegates from western embassies in neighbouring Kenya flew to Mogadishu for yesterday’s signing process, the highest-profile gathering of visitors in years.

The UN-backed meeting was held in a Portacabin behind blast walls near the runway at the smashed city’s airport, guarded by large numbers of African Union troops wary of Islamist suicide bombings. But the fact that so many high-level figures were able to attend at all was a testament to the improving security in the city, said Mr Sharif.

“The time to say Somalia is not peaceful has come to an end,” he said after he and eight others signed the document, including representatives from semi-autonomous regions now invited into the federal fold.

“The Somali people are expecting us to achieve full security so that they can have a good life. We will sustain and honour their dignity, and we will lead them to prosperity.”

Millions of pounds of British, European and international money has been channelled into a series of attempts to fix the world’s most failed state. So far, little has been achieved, one Somali MP admitted privately yesterday.

Sitting allowances paid by the European Union to Somalia’s MPs, totalling £400,000 for 2010, were frozen earlier this year after too few turned up to attend the sessions.

UN officials and western diplomats attending the meetings said there would be “graduated consequences” should the ambitious timetable agreed yesterday slip significantly.

“Financial support by the international community shall be on a results basis,” said Augustine Mahiga, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Somalia.

Among the tasks ahead include drafting a constitution, setting up an anti-corruption commission and reforming the parliament. “This all should have happened a long time ago,” said one senior UN official. “The patience of the international community is wearing thin. This really is the last chance.”