Reporters Without Borders today condemned the violence with which the Sudanese police dispersed a demonstration in central Khartoum yesterday afternoon, arbitrarily arresting at least three journalists. The demonstration was called by a score of opposition parties in protest against fuel and sugar price hikes.

“Under pressure from its own population and the international community, the Khartoum government is clearly losing its composure and its sense of responsibility,” the press freedom organisation said. “The journalists covering the demonstration were targeted because they were seeing too much. It is unacceptable that the police should behave in this way towards the press.”

Two women journalists covering the demonstration for the privately-owned, Arabic-language daily Akhir Lahrza, reporter Iman Abdelbagi Al-khidir, 27, and trainee Maha Gabir Mabrouk, 25, were held by the police for two hours, during which time they were insulted and mistreated, and their notebooks were confiscated.

Another Sudanese journalist who did not want to be identified was also arrested and held for more than an hour at the Khartoum municipal police station before being released. He was mistreated by the police, who confiscated his camera and his audio recorder.

Ibrahim Muhammad Abdulrahman, a cameraman with the Qatar-based satellite TV news station Al-Jazeera, was attacked and his equipment was briefly seized. The Reuters news agency quoted a witness as saying he saw police chase Abdulrahman, beat him with their batons and fire teargas grenades at him.

Witnesses told Reporters Without Borders the police were very hostile right from the start of the rally and began charging demonstrators without being provoked.

The seven-member regional bloc has adopted African Union-endorsed plans to send a nearly 7,000-strong mission to Somalia, where a weak transitional government is facing growing threats from newly dominant Islamists.

Kibaki and Meles said the force was needed “to safeguard the gains achieved in political settlement in that country” following the creation of the transitional government two years ago in Kenya aimed at ending years of chaos in the lawless state.

The mission aims to shore up the government’s limited authority, which has been jeopardised by the rise of the Islamists who seized Mogadishu from warlords in June and have rapidly expanded their territory in southern Somalia.

IGAD has called for Ugandan and Sudanese troops, the vanguard of the force, to be in place by the end of next month, but it is fiercely opposed by the Somali Islamists who have vowed to resist the deployment of any foreign troops.

The proposed IGAD force has also split the bloc with some members – notably Ethiopia’s arch-foe Eritrea, which has been accused of funnelling arms to Muslim militia in Somalia – adamantly against the plan.

Kenya and Ethiopia are both wary of the Islamists’ rise and Meles, who discussed the matter with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala on Monday, has been accused of sending troops to Somalia to back the government.

In Kampala, Meles repeated Addis Ababa’s long-standing denials of having deployed troops to Somalia, but admitted that some Ethiopian “trainers” had been sent at the request of Somali authorities.

Museveni said Monday that Kampala remained committed to contributing troops to the mission but first wanted an urgent regional summit to further consider the force.

Kibaki currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the IGAD executive council but yesterday’s statement from his office made no mention of such a summit.

Kibaki has offered to assist the Arab League in mediating an end to the dispute, which is expected to be a key agenda item at the upcoming talks in Khartoum, a much-delayed second round between senior officials of the government and Mogadishu’s Islamic courts.

The meeting is set to begin at the weekend and Kibaki and Meles urged the two sides “to pursue the path of dialogue in a spirit of accommodation in resolving the Somalia problem once and for all,” the Kenyan statement said.

In Nairobi en route to Khartoum the head of the Somali government delegation, parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, expressed hope yesterday that the process would succeed.

“This an opportunity for the Somali people to come together in search of peace,” he said. “We should not waste effort and expense without any credible dialogue which is essential is we are to resolve our conflict.”

Islamist officials who are already in Khartoum, said they were ready to meet the government but not until the some sticking points are resolved.

Sudanese demonstrators protest against the “western colonialists”, in reference to the US and Britian, who are backing a UN resolution to call for deployment of a UN force in Darfur, outside the UN headquarters in Khartoum. The UN Security Council has overwhelmingly approved the deployment of as many as 17,300 UN peacekeepers to Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region, with the United States pressing Khartoum to lift its opposition.(AFP/Isam Al-Haj: August 31, 2006)

“There are two irreconcilable issues: the governments constant demand for foreign troops … and the transitional charter which we do not recognise,” said an official.

Somalia has been without a functioning central government since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre plunged the country in chaos.

In addition to Somalia, the two leaders sought to easing mounting tension along the Kenyan-Ethiopian border, where at least 100 people have been killed in tribal attacks over the past three months.

They “underscored the need to continue working closely for the enhancement of security along the common border,” the statement said.

The Nairobi meeting came in the aftermath of the latest in a series of increasingly bloody cross-border cattle raids and counter-attacks in which 18 people, including 17 Ethiopian gunmen, were killed on Sunday.

The largely unpatrolled frontier has been the site of frequent clashes over cattle and resources that have been exacerbated by the effects of a killer drought.