Organisers of a national reconciliation conference in Somalia due to start on Thursday have postponed it for one month in the second delay to long-awaited peace efforts in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. Ali Mahdi Mohamed, chairman of the National Reconciliation Committee said the conference was postponed "due to unforeseen circumstances".
It will now be held on July 15. The government-organised and internationally-backed peace conference, which was first postponed from April, was intended to bring together in Mogadishu 1,355 delegates from different clans and factions across Somalia.
Foreign diplomats had expected the postponement, even though they are pinning their hopes on the conference as the best way to try to secure lasting peace in Somalia, which has been in anarchy since the ousting of a dictator in 1991.
Mahdi, reading a committee statement, said several clan leaders had requested a delay to choose their delegates, while the venue of the conference - a rundown and bullet-scared former police compound - had not yet been refurbished.