UN envoy to facilitate dialogue within divided gov't

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) to Somalia, François Lonseny Fall, on Monday left Nairobi, Kenya, for the Somali town of Jowhar to meet senior members of the Somali transitional government, officials said.

"The SRSG is there to foster dialogue within the Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) as mandated by the UN Security Council," Babafemi Badejo of the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) told IRIN on Monday.

"We welcome any positive support to the strengthening of the Somali government institutions," Dahir Mire Jibril, the president's chief-of-staff, said.

"However, the sanctity of the sovereign Somali government must be respected," he added. "The UN and individual member states have an obligation to work with the government and avoid unilateral initiatives."

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi and their supporters in the TFIs have recently relocated from Nairobi to Jowhar, 90 km north of the capital, Mogadishu.

The move to Jowhar, along with the proposed deployment of peacekeepers, particularly from Somalia's neighbours, has deeply divided the new government.

Yusuf and Gedi maintain that Mogadishu must be secured before they can relocate there. A section of the government, including prominent faction leaders, strongly disagreed with the decision to install the administration in Jowhar.

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

Badejo said the SRSG would be in Jowhar "today to meet with the president and prime minister and will later this week visit Mogadishu".

"We are looking forward to his arrival and he will have our support. We will welcome anyone who will contribute to the furthering of the reconciliation process," Aden told IRIN by phone from Mogadishu.

"We are prepared to compromise on anything except the Charter [Interim constitution]. We must all adhere to the letter and sprit of the Charter," Aden added. He said they expected the UN envoy to arrive in Mogadishu on Wednesday.

Yusuf and Aden met in Yemen in June but failed to resolve their differences over the government’s location and the deployment of foreign peacekeepers.

Somalia has had no functional central authority for the past 14 years, following the collapse in 1991 of the government of President Muhammad Siyad Barre. Civil war erupted in the country soon after Barre was toppled, as various factions and rival warlords fought for power.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which is made up of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia, sponsored two years of talks between the various Somali clans and factions, culminating in the establishment of the transitional government in October 2004.