Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Sunday made a surprise visit to the Somali capital Mogadishu, becoming the first foreign head of state to set foot there in almost 20 years, officials said.
Museveni spent several hours in Mogadishu, arriving in the morning and leaving in the afternoon, officials with the African Union force AMISOM said.
The veteran Ugandan leader was accompanied by a group of army officers and visited Ugandan troops, who form the bulk of the 7,500-strong peacekeeping force.
Museveni met with Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, new Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and other officials, AMISON officials said.
Somalia is widely seen as one of the world's most dangerous countries and is almost entirely in the hands of Islamist insurgents fighting to overthrow the UN-backed transitional government. The insurgents also control most of the capital itself.
"President Yoweri Museveni arrived in Mogadishu today and met with government officials including the president, prime minister and the speaker, ... and he discussed with them the achievements so far attained in terms of security," Major Ba-Hoku Barigye, spokesman of the AU force in Mogadishu, said.
"He was also carrying a message of solidarity for the people of Somalia who were affected by the violence and, of course, as a commander-in-chief he visited his forces," he added.
Museveni also visited injured civilians receiving treatment in an AMISOM field hospital.
Somalia's transitional government owes its survival to the backing it receives from the some 7,500 Ugandan and Burundian troops that make up the AU force.
Radical Shebab Islamists, linked to Al-Qaeda, have vowed to overthrow the transitional government and its foreign backers, whom they frequently target.
The AU force regularly comes in for criticism for its presumed role in civilian casualties when it retaliates against Shebab attacks.
A Somali government statement thanked Museveni for the visit, saying it was the first by a foreign head of state in almost 20 years.
Museveni's visit comes the day after Somali lawmakers overcame differences over the new prime minister Mohamed, a relative newcomer to Somali politics, and approved the cabinet he appointed.
"The two presidents discussed ways of ... cooperating in marshalling the support necessary for the new Somali government to fulfill its duties," a government statement said.
Parliament took more than two weeks to endorse Mohamed, eventually doing so on October 31. The vote to endorse the 18-member cabinet that the new prime minister unveiled on November 12 was also delayed several time as lawmakers argued over how voting should be carried out.
President Sharif's appointment of Mohamed led to a bitter dispute with the parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, revealing continuing rifts within the transitional administration's key players.
Since its formation in Kenya in 2004, the transitional government has failed to assert its authority on the Somali territory, 80 percent of which is currently controlled by the Shebab.
The new cabinet only has a few months to break the back of the insurgency and reclaim the capital and other key cities before the transitional government's mandate expires in August next year.
Somalia has been without a credible central authority since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre.
Source: AFP
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