Salad Returns Home After Walking Out of Nairobi Talks

NAIROBI/MOGHADISHU, 31 July 2003 — The Somali conference in Nairobi faced a setback yesterday after the president of the Transitional National Government — the main party in the conference — pulled out of the meeting saying it had become “a plot to divide Somalia”.

President Abdi Qasim Salad Hassan also said that the conference, planned for Tuesday had aimed to “change Somalia’s religion, tradition and language”. Hundreds of people, mainly women, turned out to greet him in traditional colorful clothes chanting songs and dancing outside the gates of the palace. Government ministers and members of Parliament were also lined up at the entrance to his office on his return.

He did not elaborate on what exactly has disturbed him, but indicated he was still upset about the cease-fire agreement some Somali leaders signed in Kenya in July of this year, which he said left no authority for his government. He asked that the agreement, which was signed by the Parliament speaker and the prime minister, be amended.

Salad has declined to talk about what he is going to do next, but he said, “it is up to the Somali people to decide their own destinies and establish a system which satisfies their needs and that’s what is going to work.”

He said that if Parliament was not established by Somalia’s traditional leaders the constitution allowed for the current parliament to remain in office, even after its time elapses. He also expressed concern that what was going on in Kenya might provoke yet another civil war in Somalia,” ... and I advise those still remaining in the conference to abandon it so as not to take part in the division of Somalia,” he said.

The abandonment of Salad from the Somali conference in Kenya accompanied by the absence from the meeting of one of the strongest alliances in the country, the Jubba Valley Alliance, makes the conference difficult.

Furthermore, the Somalis at home are now worried that this will incite a new anarchy in the country since the possibility exists that a government might emerge from Kenya. In addition, there are fears that Salad could renew his own government, and a government on top of the present one would provoke more conflict.

“The president left Kenya for home accompanied by more than 20 members of the council of ministers and parliamentarians,” Information Minister Ibrahim Mohamed Ibi told Agence France Presse earlier in Nairobi. Other members of the TNG delegation will leave Nairobi tomorrow, he added.

“Contrary to the wishes of the Somali people, the technical committee (made up of mediators from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya) has unilaterally decided to exclude (northern) regions from the conference, which amounts to the dismemberment of the Somali Republic,” Salad said Tuesday.

He was referring to the breakaway Somaliland, which has refused to be associated with the politics of the rest of Somalia. Salad, whose TNG controls only tiny pockets in Mogadishu and several small areas in the south, has also rejected an accord reached on July 5 by groups represented in the peace conference.

Salad also raised the issue of Somalia’s official language. The TNG president is said to favor giving Arabic the same status as Somali, the country’s official language. “The conference is against the unity, aspirations and beliefs of the Somali people,” Salad said. The interim president has accused his Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah, who was the TNG’s chief negotiator in the Nairobi talks, of signing the accord without the authority the government formed during another peace conference in Djibouti in 2000.