ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 3, 1996 TAG: 9608050039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MOGADISHU, SOMALIA
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
RIVALS OF GEN. Mohamed Farah Aidid are hinting that his death may prompt them to consider a truce.
The death of Mohamed Farah Aidid, the tough faction leader whose militias forced U.N. peacekeepers to abandon Somalia, may offer a way out of five years of civil war that left hundreds of thousands dead of violence and starvation, rival militia leaders said Friday.
A U.S. manhunt for Aidid during the peacekeeping mission led to a battle that killed 18 U.S. soldiers and a reported 300 Somalis. The October 1993 battle prompted President Clinton to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which was completed the next year.
The official cause of Aidid's death Thursday was a heart attack, although White House spokesman David Johnson said the 61-year-old general reportedly died from surgery to treat a gunshot wound he received during fighting.
He was buried Friday, and the streets of Mogadishu, the capital, were quiet.
Aidid was wounded in a July 24 battle for the key Medina neighborhood that controls an important road out of the city.
Shortly after his burial in a simple Muslim ceremony, Mogadishu radio stations run by his two archrivals announced unilateral cease-fires.
The radio stations - run by Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who controls north Mogadishu, and Osman Hassan Ali Atto, a former Aidid backer who formed his own militia - also noted that talks among as many as 15 political factions were possible if the team named to replace Aidid was ready to negotiate.
``All Somalia's people are witnessing that fighting cannot settle the Somali problem,'' Ali Mahdi told reporters gathered at his north Mogadishu villa Friday. ``I will insist that Somali people come together, sit together, discuss peacefully who their leader for the future will be.''
Ali Mahdi said Aidid's death had created an opening for a new international conference where all Somalian factions could decide the country's future. But he also noted that his fighters remained on the battlefields and would return fire if attacked by Aidid's men.
Aidid's radio station said a 30-member committee had been appointed to head his United Somali Congress-Somali National Alliance, whose members are drawn primarily from the Habr-Gedir sub-clan of the Hawiye clan, one of the six in Somalia.
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