12/05/2006 (Agence Europe) - Following the upsurge in fighting between rival militias in the streets of Mogadishu over the last four days, the High Representative for the CFSP Javier Solana and European Development Commissioner Louis Michel have, in a press release, appealed for a halt to armed clashes “whose principal victims are the civilian population”. Messrs. Solana and Michel reaffirmed their full support for “the efforts of Somalia's transitional federal institutions to restore peace and stability in Somalia,” and called on those “who have chosen to take up arms to renounce violence and to join the Somali peace process without any pre-conditions”. They stressed that “after more than a decade of fratricidal wars, the Somali population now seeks to return to normality”.