Somali President is expected to resign – spokesperson
December 24, 2008 (MOGADISHU) – The embattled Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed is expected to resign form his post after the resignation of a prime minister he had tried to impose of the parliament.
“The president has already written his resignation letter and he is expected to announce it on the coming Saturday,” Hussein Mohamed Mohamud, a presidential spokesman, said Wednesday, but he declined to give when or why he finally took this decision.
The President Abdullahi Yusuf is considered by many regional and international supporters of the Somali transitional government as an obstacle to the peace process in the Horn of Africa nation.
The announcement of his departure comes shortly after the resignation of Mohamoud Mohamed Guled, little known lawyer that Yusuf attempted to impose him last week todays after sacking the incumbent Nur Hassan Hussein and his government.
Guled aid he resigned to resign in order to pave the way for dialogue between the Somali leaders in order to settle the ongoing political crisis. The Somali parliament and the international donors have supported the sacked prime minister.
The announcement of Yusuf resignation has been welcomed by the Somali lawmakers and the African Union.
“The parliamentarians were congratulating one another today when they heard the news that the president is resigning,” said Ibrahim Isaaq Yarow, the transitional government’s deputy information minister.
The AU special representative to Somalia Nicolas Bwakire hailed the move saying it would reenergize the peace process and described the resignation as “a dignified move on the part of the president. If his decision is to resign, I would congratulate him,” he said.
Also Ethiopia reaffirmed today that the withdrawal of troops from Somalia is “irreversible”. The spokesperson of the foreign ministry said today that the decision had got the approval of the parliament.
The Ethiopian troops, which invalided the neighbouring country in December 2006, drove Somali Islamists out of the capital and have been battling the insurgents ever since. However Addis Ababa was fed-up with the continual power dispute between the Somali political forces and the lack of the needed support by the international community.
Yusuf was elected on October 14, 2004 in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the venue of the Somali peace talks between the Somali factions. He had vowed to re-establish stability in the Horn of Africa country, ravaged by factional warfare.
Yusuf, 75, had served as president of the northeastern self-declared autonomous region of Puntland since 1998.
Somalia has been without an effective government since 1991 when the regime of Muhammad Siad Barre was toppled, following which the country was plunged into anarchy and factional violence. Conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of Somalis.
(ST)