SANAA, 25 June 2005 — Somalia’s president and Parliament speaker failed to agree on where the fledgling government should be based during talks aimed at restoring central rule after 14 years, Yemeni sources said yesterday.
The Somali government, formed at peace talks in the relative security of neighboring Kenya last year, has begun its long-delayed return to the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
But there still remains a major split over where its base should be: the dangerous capital Mogadishu or the provincial town of Jowhar. The talks in the Yemeni capital Sanaa were aimed at resolving the rift.
A Yemeni government source said President Abdullahi Yusuf and Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan were due to leave Sanaa after failing to reach an agreement. “They will resume talks at a later date,” the source, who declined to be identified, said without giving any further details.
The administration’s location is a key security issue for the Horn of Africa, a region long buffeted by Somalia’s political turmoil.
The US State Department has urged both sides to agree to a plan for relocation during the current reconciliation process — the 14th such attempt since warlords toppled military dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and ushered in a state of anarchy in 1991.
“It is imperative that a viable national plan for relocation and security be formally agreed upon by a broad quorum,” it said in a statement.
Diplomats in Yemen said Somalia’s security woes continued to dog the two sides.
They said the Parliament speaker, who had already returned to Mogadishu with around 100 MPs and several powerful warlords to show that the capital was safe, insisted that the government relocate there. But the president insisted that security be ensured first.
Yusuf flew to Yemen last week for the reconciliation talks after his government bade a formal farewell to Kenya, where it had remained after its formation because of the lack of security at home. He plans to join Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi and more than 70 legislators in Jowhar.
Somalia collapsed into chaos after the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991, and conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of people since then.
