As director of the Center for Democracy and Political Reconciliation in Somalia, I am proposing an alternative peace initiative that I believe would end the long and difficult Somali conflict. The CDPRS is poised to assist the United Nations, the European Union and the United States in the reconciliation process to bring peace, to reinstitute the Somali constitution and to rebuild the Somali Republic.

The U.N.’s policy on Somalia has failed. It did not bring peace. On the contrary, it has brought more chaos. The U.N.-supported transitional government, which was based outside, has also failed to govern and bring peace.

The transitional government has become part of the problem, where it is now seen by the majority of the Somali people as one of the warring factions. There is widespread civil war in every region of the country, even the regions the U.N. claims that have relative peace.

About 2.5 million Somalis are at risk of mass starvation, and food aid corridors are closing fast because of those wars. All major nongovernmental organizations pulled out of the country and have closed their relief operations. The suffering of the Somali people who are caught in between warring factions is unbearable.

The CDPRS believes there needs to be a fundamental change in the way peace is approached in Somalia. Had the U.N. listened to the resolution created by the 1992 CDPRS peace summit in Virginia, where we assembled Somali clan elders and religious leaders, there would have been no Black Hawk Down incident, nor the recent killing of four innocent Americans by pirates.

Everything we had feared then has occurred, but at CDPRS, we still believe that peace can be achieved because we know that 99 percent of the Somali people want peace and justice.

It is evident that the U.N.’s failed policies cannot be maintained, nor can we pretend Somali issues and problems can be contained using force.

These are the steps we would take:

— The CDPRS will organize a peace conference in Mogadishu, Somalia, to assemble the marginalized clan elders and religious leaders to create a framework to initiate reconciliation initiatives for ending the long and difficult conflict and forming a credible transitional government that can prepare the Somali people for a general election based on our original constitution. A summit, held in the U.S., might precede that conference.

— At CDPRS, the most influential and most powerful clan elders will be given the opportunity to reconcile their differences among themselves in good faith, based on a broader political platform (including extremist elements) under an inclusive political process with no foreign influence. We make this a Somali-led and owned effort.

Therefore:

— We are asking the U.N. to dissolve its transitional government (the barrier to peace), as it has neither legitimacy nor the support of the Somali people, and replace it with a Somali-owned transitional government based on the Somali constitution, which we are proposing.

— We are asking the U.N. to stop taking sides and endorse our peace initiative now.

— We are asking the U.N. to relocate immediately and unconditionally its entire Somali program offices operating from outside Somalia, front-line states in particular, to Mogadishu, Somalia.

— We call on all people of Maine, and all over America, to assist us in our effort to bring peace to Somalia and return Somalia to democracy.

Ali M. Mohamed Aden was raised in Somalia. He and his family left in 1977. A software developer and former federal contractor in the Washington, D.C., area, he moved, with his family, to Lewiston about a year ago. He is currently the director of Gateway Tutor Academy in Lewiston and teaches computer science at the academy. He has been working for peace in Somalia since coming to the United States.