Ethiopian Ambassador to Somalia flew to Addis for Consultation

[erselam]

Somalia’s president embarks an urgent trip to Addis Ababa in search of arms

 

Aweys Osman Yusuf

Mogadishu 15, Oct.06 ( Sh.M.Network)

 

The president of Somalia’s federal government Abdulahi Yusuf has had an instantaneous trip to Addid Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

 

Sources close to President Abdulahi Yusuf indicate that the president has been flown by a special Ethiopian military plane from the government’s temporary base in Baidoa on Saturday.

 

 

 

Somali President, Abdulahi Yusuf

A government official, who asked for anonymity, said the president went to Ethiopia to ask for arms to facilitate his government institutions to expand its control throughout the country and immediate IGAD peacekeepers to intervene in Somalia.

 

President Yusuf survived double suicide bombing intended to lynch him on 18 September as members of the parliament convened that day to approve Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi’s reshuffled cabinet ministers.

 

Mr.Yusuf has been widely criticized by his rival Islamic Courts that he is quite allied with Ethiopia, which is very sensitive towards the rise and the expansion of Somalia’s Islamists.

 

Ethiopia had had clashes with Somalia’s al-Itihad extremists in southern Somalia in 1990s.

 

Yusuf will meet with African Union’s peace and Security Council to induce the council to dispatch peacekeeping forces to Somalia although the arrival of the peacekeepers was anticipated earlier.

His departure coincided with the day he has been inaugurated as Somalia’s president on October 14, 2004.

 

However, the shaky government barely controls beyond its small town of Baidoa in Bai region, 245 km southwest of the capital Mogadishu.

 

Uganda and Ethiopia are the only African governments and members of the regional peace body IGAD, that have number of forces in Somalia and have shown their readiness to send troops to assist president Yusuf’s largely powerless government temporarily based in Baidoa.

 

Somalia had no central authority since 1991 when tribal warlords ousted former dictator Siyad Barre and then flung the country into clan and sub-clan factional wars.

 

 

Shabelle Media Network Somalia