Kenya supports new government

The Kenyan government has said it fully supports the new Somali government elected in the Djibouti-hosted peace process. In an interview with the BBC’s Focus on Africa on 30 September, Kenyan Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed Affey said that “Kenya was part of the IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development] process that brought about this government”. He further called on all Somalis, including the refugees in Kenya, “to go back to Somalia”, support their government and help rebuild their country. Meanwhile, an editorial in the Mogadishu newspaper, ‘Ayaamaha’, rejected a call from Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi that all faction leaders be included in a new government. The call by the Kenyan president was “unpleasant news from Nairobi”, said the editorial on 30 September. Somalis “cannot understand why the Kenyan head of state forgot that it was these very faction leaders who plunged the country into anarchy for the past 10 years” and caused peace conferences to fail, said ‘Ayaamaha’. The editorial followed a statement issued by Moi on 29 September, after talks in Nairobi with faction leader Husayn Muhammad Aydid, calling for all Somali leaders to be included in the new government.