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Somalia: PM - 'I Am Not Going to Asmara'
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Garowe Online (Garowe)
12 February 2008
Posted to the web 12 February 2008
The Prime Minister of Somalia's transitional federal government, Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein, has declared that he has no intentions of visiting Eritrea to meet with opposition leaders.
The Prime Minister is currently visiting Brussels where he met with Javier Solana, the European Union's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy.
Asked about his talks with Solana, Prime Minister Nur Adde told an independent Somali journalist that the EU has promised to sustain its efforts in the fields of humanitarian assistance and national reconciliation.
But the Somali Prime Minister distanced himself from comments attributed to him by some media outlets, which stated that he planned to visit Asmara, Eritrea, seat of Somalia's exiled opposition figures.
"Our efforts to seek peaceful dialogue with them [opposition] will not halt, but I have no plans of visiting Asmara or Cairo," Prime Minister Nur Adde said, responding to speculation that Asmara-based opposition figures currently visiting Cairo planned to talk with the government.
He reiterated his stance that the Ethiopian army will withdraw from Somalia "when the Somali people reach an agreement."
A major obstacle to government-opposition peace talks has been the opposition alliance's resolute precondition that Ethiopian troops first withdraw from Somali soil before any talks can begin.
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Since January 2007, guerrilla attacks led by Islamic Courts fighters have turned the capital Mogadishu into an ungovernable patch of land, with daily shootouts, roadside bombings and assassinations of government officials.
Prime Minister Nur Adde, who was appointed last November, has pushed for genuine reconciliation with the opposition to end Somalia's 17-year conflict.
But the presence of Ethiopian armed forces in the country has complicated the possibility of a permanent peace deal.
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