"Let us all become 'peacelords' for Somalia," said Francois Fall, the UN special envoy to Somalia, in a statement released on the UN International Day of Peace.

Since the new Somali government relocated from Kenya in June, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a former faction chief, and warlords based in Mogadishu have failed to agree on the location of the capital.

The stalemate has threatened to plunge the country into new fighting.

Yusuf has set up shop in the provincial town of Jowhar, insisting that Mogadishu is too unsafe, a decision that has annoyed powerful warlords.

"There is no alternative. With dialogue and reconciliation, peace need no longer be a dream. What Somalia needs most today are men and women with the courage and the vision to deliver," Fall said.

In August, the rival sides rejected Fall's attempt to find some common ground and pave the way for peace and development in the impoverished country.

"Progress in the political process will unlock international support for peace, reconstruction and development," Fall said.

Despite several attempts to end instability in Somalia there has been no national governing authority there in 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted and the warlords took over the nation of up to 10 million.

Thirteen years of factional bloodletting followed, turning Somalia into the archetypal "failed state" and prompting a botched military and humanitarian intervention by the United Nations and the United States in the early 1990s.

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