Somali gov’t calls on speaker to withdraw from Nairobi meeting

The call was issued at a sudden meeting in Mogadishu by cabinet members who said that the Nairobi meeting is totally against Somalia’s policy and may cause an extra rift among the country’s constitutional institutions.

“Somali government is urging the parliamentary speaker to withdraw from the anarchistic meeting arranged by the United Nations special envoy for Somalia whose aim is to instigate political instability in the country,” the prime minister’s information advisor Abdirahman Omar Osman told a press conference after the cabinet meeting ended.

Osman said the speaker didn’t go to the meeting with the acceptance from the councils of the Somali parliament and the cabinet and that he doesn’t represent Somalia in the meeting.

“This unwanted meeting is intended to dismantle Somalia’s legal governmental institutions and was arranged by the U.N. envoy for Somalia with the help of members from the international community and it has nothing to do with Somalia,” he stated.

The Somali speaker, accompanied by nine lawmakers and the regional president of Puntland, Galmudug state and some moderate Islamists, is currently taking part in the two-day consultative meeting on Somalia

Despite accusing the world of arranging what it described a meeting of conspiracy, the Somali government depends largely on assistance from the international community, including the United Nations, which pays the monthly salary of Somali armed forces and parliament members.