John Holmes, undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the security council that the country’s leaders had given far lower estimates than those of the UN on how many people had fled the capital during battles in March and April.

Holmes visited the strife-torn Horn of Africa state on May 11 and 12, soon after a fresh wave of fighting between Islamist insurgents and the interim government and its Ethiopian allies. His trip was curtailed after bombs planted by suspected insurgents killed at least three people.

Relief efforts

Holmes said Abdullahi Yusuf, the president and Ali Mohamed Gedi, the prime minister, had assured him that they were committed to helping relief efforts. “However, our discussion was complicated by disagreement on the severity of the crisis,” he said.

The United Nations says nearly 400 000 people fled Mogadishu, but Yusuf and Gedi suggested that only 30 000 to 40 000 had been displaced and that half of them had already returned, Holmes said.

He said he had also raised the fate of some 250 000 long-term refugees in Mogadishu. Some sites where they were living had now been abandoned while those who had been occupying public buildings could not return because of government plans to repossess the buildings.

Sustainable solution

“The government has not yet suggested an alternative sustainable solution other than to suggest a return to the areas of origin,” said Holmes, the most senior UN official to visit the Somali capital in a decade.

The West broadly supports the government but is uneasy at its failure to reach out to the Islamists. There are tensions between the United States and Europe over the degree of support to the government and its Ethiopian backers. Holmes said public groups he had met in Mogadishu had expressed concerns about intimidation of civil society and the local media and said they feared the United Nations and the outside world had given up on the country.

“We all have a responsibility … not to turn our backs on Somalis in their latest hour of desperate need,” he told the security council. – Reuters
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