BAIDOA, Somalia, 6 August 2006 — Ethiopia’s foreign affairs minister met top officials of Somalia’s fragile interim administration yesterday in an effort to help resolve a growing political crisis.
In the past week, 40 senior officials have deserted the Somali government, many of them citing Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Gedi’s reluctance to reach out to Islamists who control the capital Mogadishu and a large swathe of south Somalia.
Ethiopia is the government’s strongest regional ally but reports that it has sent troops to protect the administration has sparked a standoff with the Islamists.
“An Ethiopian delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin arrived this morning in Baidoa and held a closed-door meeting with President Abdullahi Yusuf,” Somalia government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told Reuters.
“They came to settle the differences between the top officials of Somalia’s government.” Dinari said the delegation had met Gedi separately. The prime minister narrowly survived a crucial confidence motion last week and has come under increased pressure to resign.
“This is the first time a high-powered Ethiopian government delegation led by ... Minister Seyoum Mesfin has met with the interim government since it moved to Somalia,” Dinari said. “The consultations were behind closed doors. Nobody knows the outcome yet,” he said.
Politicians say the government is split between Yusuf and parliamentary Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, and Gedi who asked for proposed peace talks with Islamists to be postponed.
The interim government, formed in Kenya in 2004, enjoys Western backing, but has virtually no authority over the Horn of Africa country, which has not known proper central rule since the 1991 ouster of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Islamists exposed the vulnerability of the administration, based in provincial town Baidoa, when they seized Mogadishu from US-backed warlords in June.
Many Somalis believe the reports of Ethiopian troops’s presence and blame Gedi for their deployment across the border. Ethiopia has repeatedly denied it has troops in Somalia.
The Islamists’ most powerful leader, hard-line leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, has said his group will not negotiate unless Ethiopia withdraws its troops from Somali soil. Aweys said yesterday’s meetings were evidence the Baidoa administration was “an Ethiopian-led government” and called on the international community to ask Ethiopia to stay out of Somali affairs.
“If the world does not stop the Ethiopian intervention then we have to do something about it,” Aweys told Reuters by phone from his base in central Galgadud region.
