After a long-delayed weekend return from exile to his native country, Somalia’s prime minister on Monday began talks with warlords and other power-brokers on finding a home for his transitional government in the lawless war-shattered nation.
Amid a festering dispute over where the administration should set up shop, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi held talks with local leaders in the town of Jowhar, awaiting the arrival of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, officials said.
”Gedi is working on modalities that would enable his government to operate in Jowhar, Mogadishu and Baidoa as planned and endorsed by the Parliament,” said a Somali government official on condition of anonymity.
Gedi and a small group of lawmakers left Kenya — the Somali government’s home for the first nine months of its existence — for Jowhar on Saturday with little sign that the crisis over the relocation would soon abate.
Gedi and Yusuf want the government to base itself in Jowhar, about 90km north of Mogadishu, and Baidoa, about 250km southeast of Mogadishu, due to security concerns in the capital.
But the plan is fiercely opposed by Mogadishu warlords, including some in the transitional government, who are demanding the administration move to the capital, while Baidoa is currently held by an anti-Yusuf strongman, making it an unsuitable location.
As Gedi arrived in Jowhar, Yusuf was meeting in Yemen with Parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, a political rival who backs Mogadishu in the row, in a bid to end the embarrassing debacle that has deepened skepticism over the government’s viability.
Details of those talks were not immediately available, but officials said Gedi was waiting in Jowhar, a relatively peaceful town controlled by warlord Mohamed Omar Habeb, for Yusuf to hear the results to the discussions.
Yusuf enraged Habeb last week when, after leaving Nairobi with great fanfare to return home, he overflew Jowhar and landed instead in Djibouti, after which he travelled to Qatar and Yemen.
Habeb promptly announced that the government was no longer welcome in his town, but subsequently softened that position and has agreed to allow Yusuf to land there when he returns from the Gulf, officials said.
It was not immediately clear when Yusuf would arrive in Jowhar but Somali officials said he planned to return home soon and expressed irritation at widespread doubt about his intentions.
”I can’t tell you the exact date the president will come but we are ready to end media rumours that the president will not go home,” one official said. ”The president was in the Gulf for the interests of Somali people, not for tourism.” -Sapa-AFP