President calls on faction leaders

The president of the Transitional National Government (TNG), Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, is willing to talk with faction leaders opposed to his administration, a senior TNG official told IRIN on Tuesday. Abdirahman Dinari, the TNG director of information, said the president had been talking with some faction leaders face to face, and would "have no problem meeting the rest to discuss their differences and ways of moving the reconciliation process forward". Abdiqassim met the Mogadishu faction leader, Usman Hasan Ali Ato, last month, and there had been reports of indirect contacts between the president and some of the southern faction leaders, Somali sources told IRIN. Dinari said that if the faction leaders wanted positions within the TNG, then the government would accommodate them. The president believes that the outcome of the process initiated in Arta, where the TNG was set up, "should be the basis for discussion" to complete the reconciliation process in Somalia, according to Dinari.