NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya said on Friday it planned to host a gathering of 40 faction leaders from Somalia next month in an attempt to revive its neighbour's stalled peace talks.
Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said he hoped the meeting on December 9 would convince some Somalian faction leaders to re-enter negotiations, aimed at ending more than a decade of fighting, which they had abandoned over the last year.
"The meeting is absolutely crucial to jumpstart the (peace talks)," Musyoka told a news conference.
"We hope that at the end they will be able to agree on all outstanding issues, to form their own agenda and we hope they will be able to go through all those tricky matters that made some of them leave."
Kenya's Horn of Africa neighbour has been torn by violence since 1991, when military leader Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown and the country descended into chaos.
Kenya has hosted more than a year of peace talks, but they have faltered with the withdrawal of key faction leaders. Two delegates to the talks were murdered in October and November.
Musyoka said he hoped the leader of the defunct Somali Transitional National Government, who abandoned the talks in Nairobi, would be present at the leaders' meeting.
"We are very optimistic that if we get together on December 9, we will get some kind of direction," he added.
Musyoka was speaking on his return from Djibouti, a member of the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development body that is facilitating the Somali peace process in Kenya.
In September, Djibouti withdrew from the body's facilitating committee, which it shared with Kenya and Ethiopia, complaining that the talks had only served to stoke tensions between Somalia's rival leaders.
Musyoka said the Kenyan government was doing all it could to ensure delegates were safe while attending talks in Nairobi.
A hyena cools itself in mucky waters on the drying shores of Lake Nakuru in Kenya's Rift Valley, 160km (99 miles) west of the capital Nairobi, December 18, 2009. World leaders ...
