Parliament will meet in Baidoa, confirms president

Somalia’s top leaders have confirmed that the country’s transitional parliament will hold its first joint meeting on Somali soil in the south-central town of Baidoa, 240 km southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, on 26 February.

Interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed told reporters on Monday that he had agreed with Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi and parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden that the parliament would meet as planned.

The president held a three-day, closed-door meeting with he prime minister and the speaker in Galkayo town, in the self-declared semiautonomous region of Puntland. The speaker was accompanied by Public Affairs Minister Osman Ali Ato and Yemeni ambassador to Somalia Ahmed Omar, among others.

"I called this meeting after I realised we doubted each other after the [5 January, Aden] pact and the decision we reached in Nairobi [to allow parliament to convene at Baidoa]," President Yusuf said.

The pact, signed by the president and speaker in the Yemeni city of Aden, called on "the members of the parliament and government to put aside their fruitless squabbles and differences, urging them to unite, placing the supreme interest of the nation above other interests".

"Our other aim is to eradicate doubt before the first parliamentary session starts and sort out differences between us. We all agreed on common things, and this is a historic agreement," Yusuf added.

The three-day meeting in Yemen between agreed to convene the first session of parliament inside Somalia within 30 days.

On Monday, the speaker told reporters that the president, the prime minister and himself had agreed to work towards promoting better understanding between members of the parliament.

Gedi, in a brief address to reporters, said he backed the decision reached by the president and speaker and urged all other Somali leaders to support them in their course of restoring governance in Somalia.

In January, the speaker and the president first announced the Baidoa meeting in Nairobi. Gedi did not attend the announcement, as he had already left the Kenyan capital for Jowhar, the temporary base of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Observers said he had been unhappy about the decision - an indication of continuing rifts within the TFG.

Ever since the TFG moved in June 2005 to Somalia from Kenya, it has remained divided over two key issues: the deployment of peacekeepers from neighbouring countries and the location of the seat of government.

Yusuf, Gedi and their supporters are based in Jowhar, 90 km north of Mogadishu, because they consider the capital unsafe. Other MPs, led by the speaker, are in Mogadishu.