NAIROBI, June 22 (Xinhuanet) -- Members of east Africa's Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) appealed to Somali leaders Tuesday not to frustrate the final phase of the country's peace talks and threatened to subject the "spoilers" to international sanctions.

    According to a communique issued at the end of a two-day IGAD ministerial facilitation committee on the Somali peace process in Kenyan capital Nairobi, the foreign ministers from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and the Sudan, the bloc of countries that act as Somali and Sudan war mediators, warned that punitive measures would be imposed on those who were found obstructing and frustrating the remaining part of the peace process.

    The talks, sponsored by IGAD, began in October 2002 in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret, and moved to Nairobi to enter its third and final phase since February 2003, but some key Somali leaders have not attended the meeting.

    The IGAD ministers called upon the delegates to speed up the Somalia peace talks to meet the July 31 deadline and reaffirmed their decision to visit the African Union and the United Nations Security Council to brief them on the peace process.

    Appealing to partners and the international community to continue funding the process, particularly addressing debt settlement, the IGAD meeting called for transparency in the selection process of members of parliament of clan-based formula for reconciliation and formation of the proposed transitional national government.

    Somalia has been without a functioning government and torn apart by factional warfare since the 1991 toppling of Muhammad Said Barre's regime.

    The talks have been dogged by wrangles over issues such as an interim charter, the number of participants and the selection of future parliamentarians. Enditem