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Somalis express hope for peace

Mohyadeen Isse has been through it all. He has seen the turmoil and violence that has mired his country Somalia for near two decades. But he is now hopeful that peace and stability can at last be reached as the Somali government led by the new Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussien called on the opposition for conciliation talks whenever and wherever.

“This is the first time we are seeing genuine determination for peaceful resolution to the conflict by the government and readiness on the part of the opposition that dialogue is the only way out of this anarchy,” Isse said at his business premise in Bakara market in Mogadishu.

The Somali government has numerously called on the opposition abroad and those fighting the government forces and Ethiopian troops inside the country to lay down their arms and come to the negotiating table to hammer out a solution to the violence that has gripped the war-torn Horn of African nation since the beginning of the 1990s.

Leaders of the opposition groups have broadly welcomed the “new strategy” for peace by the government.

Hawa Barise, a mother of nine, says: “It is never too late to make peace because we have been living in uncertainty for so long and we at last see light at the end of the tunnel.” — Xinhua

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