Washington — Somalia's struggle to form a unified government after 15 years of clan warfare is achieving success, thanks to partners in the Horn of Africa region like Ethiopia and with help from the United Nations, the African Union (AU) and the United States, Ambassador Vicki Huddleston told the Council on Foreign Relations February 22 in Washington.
Huddleston, a former U.S. envoy to Mali and Madagascar, recently served for 15 months as acting ambassador to Ethiopia, whose government, she said, was instrumental in "pressing for dialogue" between the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Islamic Courts Council (ICC), a radical Islamist movement that had wrested control of the country until driven from power by a coalition of TFG and Ethiopian forces in December 2006 after talks failed.
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