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General Duke

Today in History : 1st August 2008 Puntland State emerges.....

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Five Regions In Northeastern Somalia Form Government

July 24, 1998

 

NAIROBI (AP)--Delegates from five regions in northeastern Somalia have agreed to form a joint administration and elected a president and a vice president, a spokesman said Friday.

The decision was taken Thursday at the end of a conference that began May 15 and was attended by 448 delegates, said Awad A. Ashara, who chaired the talks.

 

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected president and Mohamed Abdi Hashi vice president of what they called the Puntland State of Somalia, Ashara said by satellite telephone from Garowe, capital of Nugaal region, 720 kilometers north of Mogadishu.

 

Ashara said Hashi was mandated by the delegates to form a nine-member Cabinet.

Punt is the name ancient Egyptians and Greeks gave to the land along the southern coast of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that is a major source of frankinsense.

 

Ashara said the five regions making up the new administration group are Bari, Nugaal, Sanaag, Mudug and Sool.

 

Ashara said Puntland State was not seceding from Somalia and would wait for the southern region to establish an administration “and then we can discuss forming a Federal Republic of Somalia.”

Somalia has had no government since clan-based faction leaders joined to oust Dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

 

It was immediately impossible to ascertain what effect the creation of the Puntland administration would have on a December agreement by 24 Somali factions to name a government of transition and hold a national reconciliation conference.

 

Originally scheduled for mid-February in the western town of Baidoa, the conference has been postponed several times.

And after what appeared to be a promising start at reunification of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and the re-opening of the city`s port and airport, renewed factional fighting has broken out as dissidents in the northern half of the city fight warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed for a share of the spoils.

 

 

© Copyright 1998, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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