Somalia: Leaders Agree to Cooperate
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The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa)
28 August 2008
Posted to the web 28 August 2008
Tizita Kebede
Addis Ababa
Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) President Abdullahi Yusuf and his prime minister signed a deal in Addis Ababa on Tuesday to work together after a weeks-long rift that threatened to ruin their interim government.
The president fell out with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein earlier this month after the prime Minister sacked Mogadishu's powerful mayor, who was a key ally of the president.
Both men have been locked in crisis talks for days with Ethiopian government officials.
"We hope the agreement will end the differences between the Somali leaders," Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, who is also the current Chair of the IGAD said after the pair signed the deal at the presence of senior officials from the United Nations, the African Union and diplomatic corps here in Addis Ababa.
He said the agreement was a decisive factor that makes or breaks the peace processes in Somalia which was signed in Djibouti last week.
"Ten days ago, the very existence of TFG was at a critical point. The differences were a deciding factor that makes or breaks the transitional period, including the peace agreement in Djibouti." Ethiopia has propped up the government since allied Ethiopian and Somalia troops stormed into Mogadishu over the New Year of 2007 and retook the capital from an Islamist movement.
"The agreement will usher in a new era of optimism and hope for the Somalia people," Deputy Chair of the African Union Commission, Erastus Mwencha, said on the occasion.
"Ever since the broad agreement was reached at the end of the IGAD led Somali National Reconciliation Conference in 2004, we knew it would not be an easy journey and that is why the AU and the International community decided to accompany you morally and materially," the official added.
The Deputy chair also disclosed that the AU has worked closely with the UN in setting up and deploying AMISOM together with persuading the parties not in the Transitional Federal Government to join the peace and reconciliation process.
The rebels have waged relentless Iraqi-style attacks against government positions since then in violence that has killed more than 8,000 and forced another 1 million from their homes.
Despite the rift between Yusuf and Hussein, the government did sign a tentative peace agreement with a faction of the rebel Islamists at U.N.-led talks in Djibouti last week.
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But that pact has only served to stoke violence led by another faction of the opposition, whose fighters seized the strategic southern port of Kismayu on Friday.
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