NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Somalia's transitional government in neighbouring Kenya vowed Tuesday to begin moving officials back to Mogadishu by the end of the month.
The pledge came despite threats of violence against a proposed African Union peacekeeping mission seen as key to the government's return to Somalia.
Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi will in the next two weeks lead a team of Cabinet members and lawmakers to Mogadishu and other towns to assess security, political and logistic conditions, presidential spokesman Yusuf Ismail said in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
"The political decision is to have the government operating in Somalia," Ismail said.
Somalia has had no central government since 1991, when opposition leaders ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. They then turned on each other, dividing the nation of 7 million into a patchwork of clan-based fiefdoms.
A new government, formed after two years of complex negotiations between warlords, clan leaders and civil society representatives, is currently based in Kenya because it considers Somalia too unsafe.
President Abdullahi Yusuf had vowed to bring his government back to Mogadishu by the end of last year, but the move was delayed by wrangling over the division of Cabinet posts between rival clans. A new Cabinet was sworn in Jan. 7 and was endorsed by Parliament the following week.