In direct contravention of the content and spirit of the long-standing so-called friendship and security cooperation between the Republic of Somaliland and Federal Ethiopia, the Foreign Minister of Ethiopia Tedros Adhanom, read out a communique which was seen as an affront to Somaliland sovereignty that the IGAD Ministers released at the end of their one-day meeting in Mogadishu,.
IGAD 53rd ministerial one-day meeting was wrapped up in Mogadishu, issuing a twenty-point communique’ that mostly patted down the Ulusow administration on the back.
Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke addressed the conference, welcoming the summit, and enumerating Somalia’s ‘achievements’ with a toothcomb, a move that aimed to placate the security apprehensions of the conferring dignitaries.
The Prime Minister Sharmarke had also thanked the joint Somali and African forces who have stepped up the security of the capital during the meeting to ensure that no coffins left the country cordoning off a very wide area around the venue in central Mogadishu. This is did not deter, however, Al Shebab shelling of villa Somalia, which precipitated the hasty flight of delegates out of the country.
Ethiopian Foreign minister Tedros Adhanom read out the conference communiqué most of which focused on Somalia and its ‘development towards stability’, which included that IGAD observes and fully respects the territorial integrity and borders of Somalia – a point that robs life, substance and meaning of the talks between Somaliland and Somalia.
This particular point, among other things, exposes the lack of depth of the outcome, experts point out, as it annuls the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its respect of people’s rights to ‘self-determination’.
Somaliland is expected to strongly dismiss the conference as a stage-managed support for the AMISOM-guarded weak government of Mogadishu. There were pieces of intelligence arriving in Somaliland indicating that Ethiopia, through some of its generals and diplomats, was behind the Sultan Wabar defection, following a deal he struck with Ethiopia on the exclusive use of Lughaya and Zeila ports, and the gradual annexation of Awdal region to Ethiopia.
The Mogadishu conference was the second Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s ministerial meeting ever held in Somalia where the first was in 1985.
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