New crisis for Somalia
2005-06-24 11:16
Nairobi - Talks to end a bitter dispute over the new home for Somalia's transitional government broke down in rancour on Friday with top officials leaving the Yemen-hosted negotiations to go their separate ways.
After four days of discussions in Saana, the two sides were unable to reach any compromise over where the administration should set up shop and were still divided over the presence of foreign peacekeepers, officials said.
Sources close to both factions said embattled Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, a main political rival, had made no progress at all in bridging the gaps and that the two men would leave Yemen on Friday for different locations in Somalia.
"The president and parliament speaker could not come to any terms in overcoming the divisions within the transitional federal government," said Mohammed Omar, a Mogadishu-based politician with ties to the two camps.
Talks collapsed
"The government of Yemen, especially the president and lawmakers attempted vigorously to reconcile the two men, but unfortunately the talks collapsed," he said. "Both sides are leaving Yemen to arrive in Somalia."
Yusuf was expected to fly from Yemen to his home in the northeastern Puntland region where he was a powerful warlord until being elected president last year while Aden was to travel first to Djibouti and then to Mogadishu.
Aden said that the discussions had yielded no fruit but declined to discuss the specific contentious issues.
"I don't want to go into detail about the peace process, but I can tell you that the negotiations were deadlocked," he said by phone from the Yemeni capital.
Aden represents a powerful faction in the Somali administration, including Mogadishu warlords, that insists the government move to the capital and is fiercely opposed to Yusuf's plan to relocate to the towns of Baidoa and Jowhar.
Yusuf is opposed for security reasons to moving the government to bullet-scarred Mogadishu, the epicenter of the bloody anarchic fighting that has engulfed the lawless nation for the past 14 years.
He is backed by Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi who is now in Jowhar, north of Mogadishu, waiting for the president and attempting to ease the government's set-up in Somalia after the leadership left exile in Kenya earlier this month with great fanfare but no final destination.
As word began to filter out on Thursday that the talks were on the verge of collapse, Yusuf's spokesperson, Mohamed Ismail Baribari, insisted the negotiations were still under way and that the relocation issue was nearly settled.
Ever since Yusuf was elected last year, is government has been beset by internal squabbles, which Somali watchers fear will stymie efforts to restore a functional central authority in the country.