Transitional president meets speaker in Yemen

The transitional Somali president and parliamentary speaker have met in Yemen to try and resolve disagreements that have split Somalia's fledgling government, the deputy prime minister said on Thursday.

President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed travelled to Yemen after leaving the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on 13 June. His Transitional Federal Government (TFG) had been based in Nairobi since it was formed in October, 2004.

Yusuf was later joined by the speaker, Sharif Hassan Shaykh Aden.

"They are trying to formulate a framework for an agreement on all issues that have split the government," Mohamud Jama "Sifir", the deputy prime minister said by telephone from Mogadishu.

He said the Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh had offered to mediate in the "dialogue" between Yusuf and Aden after attempts by Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia to resolve the disagreement failed.

About 100 members of the 275-strong parliament, led by Aden, left Nairobi for Mogadishu last month after opposing a decision by Yusuf and Prime Minister, Ali Muhammad Gedi, to have the town of Jowhar, 90 km north Mogadishu, as the temporary seat of government.

The MPs also opposed a suggestion to include troops from Somalia's immediate neighbours in a proposed peacekeeping force to help stabilise the war-torn Horn of Africa country.

The president and the prime minister said Mogadishu was too dangerous to host the government, and insisted that the government would stay in Jowhar until security was restored in the old capital.

The interim government has already begun establishing itself in Jowhar and Gedi has started working from there. A spokesman said on Wednesday the entire cabinet was expected to move to the city by 1 July, Somalia's independence day.

Somalia has had no functional central authority for the past 14 years, following the collapse in 1991 of the government of 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 TFG.