Rome - Somali government and opposition leaders are set to meet in Rome on June 10 to discuss the Horn of Africa nation's ongoing conflict, as well as ways to stop pirates from operating from its shores, Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, said Wednesday. Italian ships, along with those of many other nations, have been targeted by Somali pirates in recent months off the East African coast.
The piracy problem can only be solved by confronting "the desperate fragility of that country (Somalia)," Frattini said speaking in Rome at a conference marking European Maritime Day.
The Rome meeting would aim to help Somalia consolidate its "fragile" United Nations-backed government, Frattini said.
Pirate attacks have escalated in recent weeks despite the presence of foreign warships in the region, including a European Union force.
Meanwhile fighting on land has intensified with the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, reporting Wednesday that over 43,000 civilians have fled the Somali capital Mogadishu over the last 12 days.
Insurgent groups al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam are attempting to push out the weak government of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist who once worked alongside the insurgents when the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) briefly ruled Somalia in 2006.
Sheik Sharif's government, propped up by 4,300 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi, controls only small sections of Mogadishu, while the insurgents hold sway across much of Southern and Central Somalia.
The insurgency, which came after Ethiopian forces invaded in late 2006 to kick out the ICU, has claimed the lives of around 16,000 people, mainly civilians.
The resultant insecurity has helped feed an explosion of piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
Ethiopia pulled out in January 2009, but in recent days there have been reports that its troops have once again crossed the Somali border.
Somalia has been embroiled in chaos since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and is widely regarded as a failed state.
