Djibouti,(insidesomalia.org)-The U.N. Security Council flies to Djibouti on Monday to give strong backing to U.N.-sponsored peace talks on Somalia, but key players disagree on the chances of reconciling the government and Islamic opponents.

In a visible sign of the wide gulf between the warring parties, Islamic insurgents fired mortars at Mogadishu airport as the plane carrying Somalia's transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf, and his delegation was about to take off Sunday for Djibouti.

Presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamed Mohamud said the attack was not an assassination attempt, but an attempt to disrupt the president's departure. He said no one on the plane was hurt and it took off safely shortly afterward, but there were unconfirmed reports of two minor injuries at the airport.

During their nine days on the continent, council diplomats will meet many of the key players in African hotspots, with stops also in Kenya, Sudan, Chad, Congo and Ivory Coast.

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, who is co-leader of the Djibouti visit, wanted representatives from the U.N.'s most powerful body to visit Somalia. But U.N. security experts vetoed a stop in the conflict-wracked country, which has been in a state of anarchy since warlords overthrew Dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.

Regional countries mediated agreement on a transitional government in 2004, but it remains very weak and needed to call in troops from neighboring Ethiopia in December 2006 to oust Islamic militants who controlled the capital and most of southern Somalia.

The Islamic insurgents, nonetheless, remain a potent and disruptive force in the country and a continuing threat to Yussuf's government, which is backed by both the European Union and United States.

At least 14 previous attempts to get all the rival Somali parties to form a stable government have failed.

But at least in some quarters there was greater optimism about the new round of talks in Djibouti under the auspices of the U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, and with Security Council members there for support.

The government's information minister, Ahmed Abdisalam, was hopeful about the talks.

"We are the ones who fought, so we should reconcile for the sake of our people and country. This time, we hope it is a good chance for us," he said Saturday.

Sheikh Mohamud Sheikh Ibrahim, a top leader of the Council of Islamic Courts, which was ousted in December 2006, said: "We support the talks in Djibouti with the U.N. on how the Ethiopians would withdraw from our territory, and also welcome an independent broad-based reconciliation among Somalis."
"But we see the deployment of any other foreign troops would be meaningless," Ibrahim said.

The transitional government has been lobbying for U.N. peacekeepers to replace a 2,600-strong African Union force now in Somalia. In early May, the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution saying it will consider deploying U.N. peacekeepers "at an appropriate time," subject to progress in improving political reconciliation and security conditions on the ground.

On the pessimistic side, Zakariye Haji Mohamoud, a top official in the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia based in Eritrea, called the Djibouti talks "part of a clear, ongoing conspiracy against Somalia pushed by the U.N. special representative for Somalia."
"It's aim is only to derail or break the backbone of the insurgency against the Ethiopian occupiers and their stooges," he said.

Mogadishu resident Abdul-Khadir Hassan Hussein predicted the talks would not be "fruitful" because neither side is prepared to compromise and because al-Shabab, the military wing of the Islamic Courts, has been labeled a terrorist group by the United States and "is not part of the talks, but part of the ongoing insurgency."
Britain's U.N. Ambassador John Sawers, who is leading the council mission with Kumalo, said: "We are at one of those stages on Somalia where any betting person would bet that the efforts would fail because that's the history of this.

"But the chance of making progress is rather greater than it has been before, and we want to do everything we can to nurture that progress," he said.