MPs set for Baidoa parliamentary meeting

Preparations for the first meeting of the Somali transitional federal parliament inside the war-torn country are on schedule and members have started arriving for the session, one of the organisers said.

The 26 February meeting is due to take place in Baidoa town, 240 km southwest of the capital, Mogadishu.

"The plan to hold the session in Baidoa is on track. As of this moment everything, including the conference hall and accommodations, is in place," Isak Mohamed Nur, who is also the local MP, said.

All militias have been moved out of the town and encamped in former military barracks, he added.

"We have 400 specially selected men who will provide the security," Nur told IRIN on Thursday.

The members of the interim parliament (MPs) have been arriving in Baidao over the past two weeks. Some 42 Mogadishu-based MPs arrived on Wednesday.

"We expect another batch from Puntland today [Thursday]," Nur said. The last batch, he added, would arrive on Friday from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"If all goes according to plan, most of the cabinet and government should be in Baidoa by Friday [24 February]," he said.

Nur said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi were expected in Baidoa on Saturday. The president would open the session the following day.

The historical meeting was announced by the speaker of the parliament, Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden, on 30 January in the presence of Yusuf, after days of consultations with Gedi in Nairobi.

At a three-day meeting in Yemen in early January, Yusuf and Aden agreed to convene the first session of parliament inside Somalia within 30 days.