Somalia will have a new interim administration in place by next month after all outstanding issues are resolved at peace talks in Nairobi, Kenya’s envoy to the talks said this week.
”We hope to resolve the remaining issues by June 30 and by early July we should have formed a parliament and a government,” Bethwell Kiplagat told AFP.
Kiplagat said that the war-torn Horn of Africa nation ”had expected to have its new government [by June 18], but this was not possible”.
”It is now safe to assume that by early July we should have formed the parliament and rapidly form the government, if God is willing,” Kiplagat told Somali delegates at the talks.
Kiplagat said he had received 31 applications from candidates for the Somalian presidency.
Amnesty International on Tuesday urged Somali delegates attending the talks in Kenya to refrain from choosing leaders with bad human rights records to run a new interim administration.
Somali warlords, clan and civil society leaders and Transitional National Government officials are currently holding a third round of peace talks in the Kenyan capital to restore peace and establish the first recognised government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in January 1991.
A cross section of Somalis, including warlords, have, through the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, proposed themselves as candidates for election to the presidency of Somalia.