SOMALIA - Feb 5 - Somali PM Launches Peace Bid Amid Attack On Port.

Somali PM Ali Muhammad Gedi opens a reconciliation workshop in Mogadishu design to foster peace amid an escalating spate of guerrilla-style attacks in the volatile Horn of Africa nation. In the latest assault, unknown assailants fired four rockets at Mogadishu port hours before Gedi began the week-long meeting of some 200 traditional leaders, plus peace and women's rights activists. The pre-dawn rocket attack was the latest in a series of almost daily strikes targeting Somali government installations and the administration's Ethiopian allies. "Fortunately, the rockets plunged into the sea. No one was hurt and port operations are going on", said Abdul Rahman Muhammad Warsame, in charge of security at the port. Rivalry Officials blame remnants of a defeated movement, which ran most of south Somalia for six months until it was ousted by a government-Ethiopian offensive over the New Year. But many Mogadishu residents fear the violence in the capital may also be due to rivalry between warlords who ousted a dictator in 1991, carving Somalia into a patchwork of fiefdoms controlled by militias. Feb 5 attack came after a weekend visit by an African Union (AU) team assessing security prior to a planned deployment of peacekeepers in Somalia. The AU team was at the port on Feb 4. Under Western and Ethiopian pressure to reach out to all parties in Somalia, including moderate Islamists and powerful clans, Pres Abdullahi Yousuf agreed last week to call a reconciliation conference. Officials said the workshop in Mogadishu will pave the way for the bigger national reconciliation conference. "I call for peace", PM Gedi said. "If we work together we can pacify this city. The Somali people's dignity depends on the outcome of this meeting".