THE breakaway state of Somaliland in northwest Somalia will hold a referendum on May 31 to ask three million voters whether they want independence from Mogadishu, officials said Tuesday. “There is no way we will postpone it,” said Abdulkadir Hagi Ismail Jirdeh, deputy speaker of Somaliland’s parliament. Somaliland, which seceded from the rest of Somalia in May 1991 – five months after the dicator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled – has yet to be recognised by the outside world. Along with Puntland, another breakaway state in the northeast, Somaliland has been spared from continued inter-clan warfare in the Horn of Africa country, which has lacked an effective central government since Barre’s ouster. The United Nations has been pressuring Somaliland to abandon its separatist ambitions and join a Transitional National Government (TNG) set up in Mogadishu last year. But several key Somali warlords have rejected the legitimacy of the TNG.