NAIROBI, June 10 (Reuters): A hardline Islamist leader rejected Tuesday a UN -brokered peace pact signed in Djibouti by the Somali government and some opposition figures, and vowed that war would continue. "We don't see that as a peace deal, we see it as a trap," Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told Reuters by phone from Eritrea. "We encourage the insurgents and the Somali people not to be tired of combating the enemy."
Somalia's interim government and some members of the exiled opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) signed a deal late Monday calling for the deployment of UN peacekeepers and agreeing to a ceasefire after one month.
"The people have been waiting a long time, so we have a weight of responsibility on our shoulders," Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said at Monday's ceremony.
He shook hands with ARS chairman Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in the first face-to-face contact between the two delegations during two rounds of talks in Djibouti. "It is an historic agreement ... it gives back hope," an ARS spokesman said.
But with some senior members of the ARS-including cleric Aweys-boycotting the talks, and fighters on the ground also saying they would not recognise them, few believe this pact will bring peace to Somalia after 18 years of civil conflict.
The sticking point is the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia, who are fighting with the government against Islamist-led insurgents. The Djibouti pact called for the replacement of the Ethiopians by UN troops. But Aweys poured scorn on any foreign intervention. "We have no choice but to continue to fight the Ethiopians and the other foreign troops," he added in comments from the Eritrean capital Asmara, where the ARS is based.
The African Union (AU) has 2,200 peacekeepers in Somalia, but they have done little to stem the violence and have been targeted themselves. The AU wants the UN to take over.
Longing for an end to conflict in their Horn of Africa nation of 9 million people, some Somalis welcomed the government-ARS pact but others were skeptical.
"If they implement what they have signed, it will be ok and I think fighting will gradually end," said Hussein Ali, 60, a resident of Mogadishu where dozens died over the weekend in the latest flare-up.
