UN envoy in bid to end rift in federal bodies

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Somalia, François Fall, left Nairobi, Kenya, over the weekend for Egypt and Ethiopia to hold discussions with regional organisations on ending a rift within Somalia's Transitional Federal Institutions, an official said.

"The SRSG hopes that the trip will help in fostering dialogue within the TFIs," Babafemi Badejo, of the UN Political Office for Somalia, told IRIN on Tuesday.

While in Egypt, Badejo said, Fall met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Amre Moussa, and "had fruitful discussions with them".

Badejo said Fall, who is now in Ethiopia, would meet with the chairman of the Commission of the African Union, Alpha Oumar Konare, and hoped to meet Ethiopian authorities.

Following their relocation in June from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, Somalia's transitional institutions have been divided over where the seat of government should be in their country. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi and their supporters in the transitional institutions relocated to the town of Jowhar, 90 km north of the capital, Mogadishu. They maintain that Mogadishu must be secured before they can transfer the government to the city.

About 100 members of the 275-strong Transitional Federal Parliament, led by Speaker Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden, are in Mogadishu attempting to restore stability to the war-scarred city.

A section of the government, including several prominent faction leaders, strongly disagreed with the decision to install the administration in Jowhar. The proposed deployment of peacekeepers, particularly from Somalia's neighbours, has also deeply divided the new government.

There have been numerous attempts by the international community and the UN to mediate an end to the divisions. Earlier in August Fall presented an "agenda for dialogue" to Somalia's interim leaders, aimed at helping them overcome the current differences.

Somalia has had no operational government for the past 14 years, following the collapse in 1991 of the government of the late President Muhammad Siyad Barre. Civil war erupted soon after Barre was toppled, as various factions leaders fought for power.

The regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development - made up of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia - sponsored two years of peace talks in October 2004, culminating in the establishment of the interim government in Nairobi.