Top interim leaders delay first trip home

The first visit to Somalia by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi was delayed on Wednesday due to logistical problems, a senior official in the transitional government told IRIN.

Yusuf and Gedi were to have left Nairobi on Wednesday morning, leading a large delegation of the Kenyan-based Somali government, for a weeklong visit to the war-torn country.

"Difficulties in finding the right aircraft have delayed the trip," Abdurrahman Ali "Malaysia", the special adviser to the prime minister, told IRIN.

The trip, Ali said, was now expected to start on Thursday. The delegation would visit the towns of Jowhar, Galkayo, Beletweyn and Baidao, all in south and central Somalia, he added.

At least 40 members of the interim government, who left on 16 February, were in the country to prepare for Yusuf's visit. Some 80 members of a 275-strong Parliament were also in the capital, Mogadishu, ahead of the visit.

The planned trip by the president would mark the first time that he and Gedi stepped on Somali territory since Yusuf's election in October 2004.

Military experts from various African countries are currently in Somalia to assess the situation ahead of a proposed deployment of a peace mission there.

The regional Inter-governmental Authority on Development, whose members are Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, sponsored two years of peace talks between various Somali clans and factions that culminated in the formation of the transitional federal government. The process ended a 14-year period when Somalia lacked a functional central government.

The new government, which includes several faction leaders, has not been able to relocate from Nairobi to Somalia, citing security considerations. However, it has come under increasing pressure from the Kenyan government and western diplomats to do so.