Somalia agrees to talks with Islamists
Somalia’s interim government agreed on Tuesday to attend new peace talks with the country’s powerful Islamists, responding to a U.N. drive to avoid war in the Horn of Africa country. “We will go to Khartoum without any preconditions,” said Abdirizak Adam, interim President Abdullahi Yusuf’s chief of staff, after talks with a senior U.N. envoy in the government’s base in the provincial town of Baidoa. But there was no immediate word from the newly powerful Islamists on whether they would attend the planned talks in Khartoum on August 1-2. Full Story