EC offers €10 million to improve security

Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said on Wednesday that the organisation had earmarked more than €10 million (US $11.7 million) to help Somalia's transitional government improve security in the Horn of Africa country.

The commission could provide an additional €49 million ($57.3 million) to support reconstruction and development programmes.

The additional support, the EC said in a statement, would depend on how much progress was made in stabilising the country and getting the transitional federal government (TFG) to start working effectively, Michel said during talks with Somalia's Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi in Brussels.

Michel also stated that the commission would soon appoint a special envoy for Somalia and open a field office in the town of Jowhar, where the TFG is currently based. He reaffirmed the EC’s support for Somalia's transitional administration and the reestablishment of governance in the country.

The transitional federal institutions moved to Somalia in 2004 from Kenya, where they were created after a reconciliation conference, but the administration has been divided over where the seat of government should be situated.

President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the prime minister and their supporters pitched camp in Jowhar, 90 km north of the capital, Mogadishu. The two leaders cited insecurity as the reason behind their decision not to work from Mogadishu.

Other MPs, led by parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden, went to Mogadishu - a city largely destroyed during nearly 15 years of factional warfare following the toppling in 1991 of the Siyad Barre regime.

On Tuesday, Somali parliamentarians based in Mogadishu resolved to hold talks with the rest of the government in a bid to bridge differences that have paralysed the new administration.