Top US envoy on Somalia mission
The top US diplomat for Africa is in Somalia to urge the interim government to create a lasting truce, as violence threatens to derail reconciliation.
Jendayi Frazer is to meet the president and PM in the southern city of Baidoa, seat of the interim government.
Ms Frazer is the highest ranking US official to visit Somalia since 1994.
Her visit comes amid a fragile truce in the capital, Mogadishu, after a fierce assault by Somali and Ethiopian forces against Islamists and clan militias.
"The idea is to try to talk to all sides to turn this seemingly temporary ceasefire into something more permanent, and press for the reconciliation," an official told the Reuters news agency.
Casualties
The unannounced visit of the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs comes on the sixth day of the ceasefire.
Map
A national reconciliation conference is scheduled for 16 April.
The four-day assault last month led to some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu for 15 years.
Hundreds of civilians are reported to have died in the fighting and up to 100,000 fled the capital, according to the UN.
Fighters linked to the Hawiye clan, which controls the capital, and militant Islamists are reported to be keeping vigil at their strongholds in Mogadishu.
African Union troops are supposed to be replacing Ethiopian soldiers, who stepped in at the end of 2006 to support a Somali government campaign to oust Islamists controlling the capital.
