Somalian Officials, Islamists Sign Agreement

Somalia’s largely powerless government and the Islamic fighters who control the country’s capital agreed Thursday to stop military action and recognize each other.

Their nonaggression pact, signed in Sudan, is a move toward international acceptance for the Islamic Courts Union, which the U.S. has accused of harboring Al Qaeda suspects and planning to impose a Taliban-style theocracy throughout Somalia.

The alliance of militias has said, however, that it does not want to control Somalia’s government, a view seemingly confirmed by the ICU’s recognition of the 2-year-old interim administration backed by the United Nations.

The transitional government, lacking the force or support to rule from Mogadishu, the capital, is based in Baidoa, 140 miles to the northwest. It agreed to recognize the religious justice system that the Islamic Courts Union has operated for years in much of southern Somalia.

The ICU became the dominant military force in Somalia this month after it defeated secular warlords and seized control of Mogadishu and much of the south in battles that killed hundreds, many of them civilians caught in the crossfire.

Although the ICU had not directly fought the interim government, it had refused to recognize the authorities in Baidoa as the national government.

“The parties have committed themselves to cease all verbal provocation and all military action,” the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, said at the signing presided over by Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.

The U.N.-backed government “recognizes the reality and existence of the Islamic Courts,” Moussa said.

Both parties also agreed to prosecute war criminals and to reconvene July 15 in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, to negotiate a full peace agreement without preconditions, Moussa said.

Somalian Foreign Minister Abdullahi Sheik Ismail and the ICU’s chief delegate, Mohammed Ali Ibrahim, signed the pact.