(Adds U.N position in paragraphs 10-12) By Guled Mohamed MOGADISHU, June 14 (Reuters) - Somali insurgents attacked Ethiopian troops hours after a reconciliation conference was postponed for a second time and also killed a local official on Thursday. Islamist-led rebels have been fighting the Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies since January when they were ousted from Mogadishu after a two-week war. Large-scale battles have given way to guerrilla-style strikes and the overnight attacks on Ethiopian troop positions were the heaviest attacks since last month. Witnesses said two civilians died when the assailants opened fire and launched rocket-propelled grenades at three sites held by the Ethiopians. "It was a brief but heavy exchange," resident Ibrahim Maalim said. "Gunmen simultaneously attacked Ethiopian troops staying at the old pasta factory, the stadium and the former defence headquarters." Locals said a man and woman, both civilians, were killed. Heavily-armed Ethiopian troops sealed off the area. A Somali jihadist group calling itself the Young Mujahideen Movement claimed responsibility for the attacks and said it suffered no casualties. The Web posting could not be independently verified but was on a site used by al Qaeda and other Islamists. In a separate attack, two men with pistols shot dead a district commissioner from northern Mogadishu, residents said. The United Nations Security Council said on Thursday there was now an urgent need to plan for a possible U.N. peacekeeping force in Somalia, but officials said the political situation there would determine if one went. A policy statement by the 15-nation council appeared to show growing interest in a U.N. force to take over from the small contingent of African Union troops. However, members remain cautious about peacekeeping in a country which has known only anarchy since the ousting of a dictator in 1991. "The Security Council emphasizes the urgent need for appropriate contingency planning for a possible United Nations mission, to be deployed in Somalia if the Security Council decided to authorize such a mission," the statement said.
"NOTHING JUSTIFIES DELAY" The flare-up of violence followed the one-month postponement of a peace conference that had been due to start on Thursday. The government-organised and internationally backed National Reconciliation Conference (NRC), first postponed from April, had been intended to bring together in Mogadishu 1,355 delegates from different clans and factions across Somalia. The meeting was delayed because many delegates have not yet been chosen and the venue, a rundown and bullet-scarred former police compound, is still not ready, the NRC chairman said. "These are not serious reasons," Louis Michel, the European Union's aid chief, told Reuters in an interview. "Nothing justifies the delay ... Some people need to stop playing speculative games that aim at buying time, or excluding some parties," he said. "We need good faith in the reconciliation process." Foreign diplomats had pinned their hopes on the conference as the best way to try to secure lasting peace in Somalia. Burundi said it would deploy a long-awaited battalion of peacekeepers to Somalia next month to join 1,600 Ugandan troops already patrolling on behalf of the African Union in Mogadishu. (Additional reporting by Firouz Sedarat in Dubai, Ingrid Melander in Brussels and Patrick Nduwimana in Bujumbura)
