ROME, June 10 (Reuters) – Italy will become the first Western country to reopen its embassy in Somalia, in a gesture of support for the transitional government, officials said on Wednesday.

A meeting in Rome of the International Contact Group on Somalia, with delegates from 33 countries and international organisations, expressed support for President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s government and urged others to follow Italy’s lead.

“There was a decision to reopen Italy’s embassy in Mogadishu and this is very important,” said the U.N. Special Representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah. “The African Union has decided to follow suit.”

Ould-Abdallah said only Libya, Yemen and Kenya had embassies in Somalia’s crumbling sea-front capital Mogadishu, ravaged by 18 years of on-off civil war. Italy’s pre-World War Two fascist government controlled large parts of Somalia.

The Somali government and its moderate Muslim allies are battling several groups of Islamist insurgents. Ahmed is himself an Islamist who previously led the Islamic Courts Union which controlled Mogadishu before an Ethiopian invasion in 2006.

Aid agencies say more than 1 million people have been made homeless and about 3 million need urgent food aid in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who attended the meeting, said the government would not negotiate with the opposition unless it laid down its weapons.

He praised the efforts of the international naval task forces off the Horn of Africa in combating piracy and expressed hope that 16 Italian hostages held by Somali pirates would soon be released.

The International Contact Group, founded in 2005, brings together the U.N. and countries committed to fostering peace in Somalia. (Editing by Andrew Dobbie)

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