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SOMALIA: ABDUALHI AND SHARIF FINALLY SIT TOGETHER IN YEMEN June 21, 2005

Thanks to president Ali Abdalla Salah of Yemen, the two leaders agreed to sit and talk about their differences in the presence of Yemen officials – a good progress but embarrassment to Somali people whose leaders cannot solve their problems without a third country intervention.

Since 1991 when Sida Barre fled Mogadishu, Somalis have been conducting national reconciliation conferences from one country to another - about a dozen all.

This meeting between the president and the speaker of the house is different. Mr. Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected president last year in national reconciliation conference in Nairobi, Kenya by the parliament headed by Mr. Sharif Hassan Adan. Soon after Mr. Yusuf came to power, three Mogadishu armed faction leaders didn’t like how the new president was conducting national affairs. He is from the north and they thought he might disarm their militias while rehabilitating his own into the national army.

Mogadishu leaders along with the speaker of the parliament left Nairobi conference with many parliament members in protest. Now, the nation has two factions within the government and that’s where President Salah comes in. He is trying to save Somalia’s fragile government from becoming another failed attempt.

Somalia has been without a government for more than a decade now.

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