With Somalia’s transitional authorities deadlocked over the government’s location and the deployment of foreign peacekeepers, a senior United Nations official will hold consultations this weekend with the heads of regional organizations aimed at healing a rift that has stalled the latest attempt to re-establish a central authority in the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation.
François Lonsény Fall, Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Somalia, is expected to meet on Saturday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Amre Moussa.
On Sunday, he will travel to Ethiopia to meet with the Chairman of the Commission of the African Union (AU), Alpha Omar Konare. While in Addis Ababa, he is also expected to meet with the Ethiopian authorities.
Earlier this month, Mr. Fall held private talks in the town of Jowhar with senior Somali officials who pledged to work with the UN to end the stalemate over the relocation of the fledgling government and its institutions 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.
Mr. Fall remains in close contact with the leaders of the Somali Transitional Federal Institutions, and according the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNOPS), President Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi maintain that Mogadishu is not secure and the seat of government should be temporarily established in nearby Jowhar and Baidoa until the capital can be made safe.
However, Speaker for the Parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, some cabinet members and a large number of Parliamentarians insist that conditions are adequate for the Government to relocate to Mogadishu.