Somalia, Kenya reach agreement

2005-09-06 13:57

Nairobi - Somalia's transitional government and Kenya signed a framework agreement on Tuesday to work together on security and other issues, the first such agreement Somalia had signed with any country in 14 years.

Somalia's transitional government had been eager to get international recognition since it left its temporary base in Kenya in June to try establishing itself in the Horn of Africa country that had not had an effective government since 1991.

In Nairobi, Somali foreign affairs minister Abdullahi Sheik Ishmail and Kenyan foreign affairs Chirau Ali Mwakwere signed the agreement that the two would provide only a basis for discussing how they would co-ordinate security along their long porous border.

Ishmail said that the areas the two countries would work on were cross-border security, economic and financial co-operation, trade, education and health issues.

No effective central government

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said that other priorities for Somalia's collaboration with Kenya were helping Somali communities devastated by more than a decade of conflict and setting up local administrations throughout the country.

There had been no effective central government in Somalia since clan-based warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Warlords then turned on each other, plunging the country of 7 million into chaos.

The transitional government, formed after lengthy peace talks in Kenya last year, raised some hope, but its members quickly split over, where the government should be based and whether it needed peacekeepers from neighbouring countries to help establish order.

Gedi played down those differences on Tuesday.

He said: "There are no split groups within the transitional federal government. The transitional federal institutions are one.

"I recognise there are differences of opinion and this happens all over the world."

- AP