Somalia: UN Envoy Wraps Up Visit, Government Pledges To Work To End Rift
New York, Aug 2 2005 4:00PM
The top United Nations envoy for Somalia has wrapped up private talks in the town of Jowhar with senior Somali officials
who pledged to work with the UN to heal the rift over the government’s location and the deployment of foreign
peacekeepers that stalled the latest attempt to re-establish a central authority in the war-shattered Horn of Africa
nation.
According to a UN spokesman in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Somalia, François
Lonsény Fall, returned to Nairobi yesterday after talks in Jowhar with President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister
Ali Mohamed Gedi of the Transitional Federal Government.
Mr. Fall was in Somalia to help the leaders overcome the current differences within the Transitional Federal
Institutions on the way forward, particularly on the relocation of the fledgling government from Kenya to Somalia, which
has had no functional central authority for 14 years following the collapse in 1991 of the government of Muhammad Siad
Barre.
Yesterday’s meeting also focused on security and reconciliation. At a joint press conference following the meeting,
Prime Minister Gedi expressed the Government’s willingness to work with the UN and in particular with Mr. Fall on
resolving the current difficulties, the spokesman said.
In a June report, the Secretary-General noted that although the interim government had been formed in Nairobi more than
eight months ago, deep splits between President Yusef and Parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan over its location
within the country had stalled a move either to the Somali capital Mogadishu, or nearby Jowhar.
Calling for “serious dialogue” between the Somali factions to end this controversy, he also urged the parties to resolve
their differences over the inclusion of troops from the frontline States (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya) in a future African
Union/Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) peace support mission requested by the President. A large
number of members of Parliament, cabinet ministers and other leaders oppose the deployment of troops from those
countries.
Meanwhile, security permitting, Mr. Fall plans to visit Mogadishu later this week for discussions with the Speaker of
Parliament, and other cabinet officials and civil society groups there.
ENDS