Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Somaliland vice president says unity with Somalia is inevitable

In a surprise move, Somaliland’s vice president, Ahmed Yusuf Yasin, said yesterday that his government is ready to reunite with Somalia through a federal system.

Speaking at a farewell ceremony for the UDUB party Diaspora members who have come to Somaliland to attend the party’s convention, Mr Yaasin has, for the first time, disclosed his government’s approach towards the new Somali government formed recently in Djibouti.

He said ‘ Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the new Somalia president is a young and a moderate Islamist leader whom Somaliland can do business with’. ‘ The politicians from 1960s who had been responsible for most of the today’s political crisis are gone, and Somalia has now new leadership’ added Yassin.

He said that those who believe that Somaliland and Somalia will not come together and that the border will remain closed for ever are wrong, adding that Somaliland and Somali people share a lot of common values and that no one can be stopped from going to Mogadishu. By far, this is the clearest gesture made by a serving Somaliland political leader towards unity with Somalia.

Somaliland joined voluntarily with Somalia on 1 July 1960 to form the Somali Republic and reasserted its independence at the fall of the Republic on 17 May 1991. This reassertion had been later confirmed in popular referendum in 2001. The Somaliland constitution states the independence of Somaliland as a sacrosanct.

Some political commentators described Mr. Yaasin’s statement as a radical shift in the current Somaliland government policy towards Somalia. Others pointed out that Yasin, a moderate Islamist himself, expects to have a leadership post in a future Islamist-run government in a federal Somalia. But in the short term, his remarks will surely have a negative impact on his party’s attempts to win the presidential election scheduled on 29 March 2009.


Source: Somaliland. Org

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