Update on Somalia. My very "inside" source in Somalia (who wishes to stay anonymous) sent me this: "

"Things are slowly developing in this part of the world. Some of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) are still in Djibouti like part of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) members. They seem very happy that the Saudi king will finaly receive them to officially sign the Djibouti agreement in Makka...Meanwhile, the hardliners in the alliance who stayed away from the U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti that led to the June 9 signing of an agreement between the more moderate Ahmed and the transitional federal government and based in Asmara (Eritrea), and their leader the Islamist cleric Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys said recently that representatives from his faction and allies of Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed of the ARS have received permission from the Yemeni government to hold direct talks in Sana'a. Aweys, who is influential among some clan and radical Islamist insurgents in Somalia, says he is not planning to attend the meeting. But he says he is ready to support whatever agreement is reached between the two sides. The Islamist leader says the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) requested the meeting, because there are issues to discuss and Somalis often resolve differences by talking. He says everyone is expected to abide by what the majority decides (he already said that before but didn't abide). The Djibouti agreement stipulates that Ethiopian troops, who have backed the Somali transitional government since late 2006, would withdraw within 120 days if a U.N. stabilization force of sufficient strength is in place to replace them. Hardliners argue the agreement should have called for Ethiopians to withdraw immediately. They have threatened to remove Ahmed as chairman of the ARS for participating in the peace process. And to save his position, Ahmed has recently made comments that suggested he was eager to prove to Somalis that the opposition alliance is intact and that a clear timetable for an Ethiopian withdrawal has been set. He said that the opposition alliance are all on the same page in the ARS and that they all want the Ethiopians out. " We will liberate by negotiations, but if that does not work, we will rejoin the armed resistance and we are confident that if we liberate by negotiations, the militant faction of the ARS will join us. So it is all depending on 120 days ", according to Sheik Sharif. Ahmed's comments may allow an opposition reconciliation meeting to take place in Yemen. But it is look like also an alarming signal to the international community, which must now find a way to quickly deploy a sizeable stabilization force in Somalia to keep the country from plunging further into violence. And, this amazingly so called international community is again looking away... As the Economist said it: "The only hope at present is for a robust international peacekeeping force to come in and allow the Ethiopians to withdraw. The UN Security Council has passed resolutions paving the way for its own blue-helmet mission. But this is unlikely to happen. UN-backed peacekeepers have an unhappy history in Somalia and furthermore the UN lacks resources. It took a lot of political pressure to get the Security Council to agree to send peacekeepers to Darfur, the blighted western region of Sudan; they have yet to arrive in the promised numbers months after they were due. Nor is it likely that the African Union will add to its few thousand peacekeepers, mainly Ugandans, in Mogadishu. Western diplomats working on Somalia say their reports make little impact on their governments back home. Despite the misery, the international will is lacking. So Somalia remains abandoned, lawless and too dangerous for most outsiders to operate in." In the meantimes, fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian and government troops continue in Mogadisho... Since the occupation of Ethiopians troops with the benediction of Washington, more than 6500 people mostly civilians have been killed, displaced more than one million others, and has left Somalia in the midst of what the United Nations says is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world."