His Excellency the President of the Republic of Somaliland, Musa Bihi Abdi, Thursday, called national leaders to a consultative meeting convened at the presidency to find a common stand on pressing issues at the head of which was the invasion of Somalia’s Puntland forces which was soundly repulsed.
At the meeting, besides the President and the Vice President, all three national parties, the House of Elders, the House of representatives, the judiciary were fully and visibly represented. Dahir Rayale Kahin, the 3rd President of the Republic of Somaliland, and the other three living Vice-Presidents since 1991, Hassan Essa Jama, Abdirahman Aw Ali Farah, and Ahmed Yussuf Yassin, were present, too, as was veteran politician/leader and statesman, Professor Ali Khalif Galaydh.
The leaders resolved that:
- El Afwein clan hostilities must be decisively and finally brought to a lasting end
- All differences and discord which surfaced during and in the wake of the recent presidential elections be amicably resolved among the national parties
- the nation adopt a unified stand against the Somalia-prompted, Puntland Federal-State military invasion on Somaliland troops in the Tukaraq areas
- Projects earmarked for the eastern regions of Somaliland be accelerated
- The international community be informed that Somalia has mounted an unaggravated, naked aggression against the territorial integrity of the Republic of Somaliland using military force in the Tukaraq area of Sool
- Somaliland reiterates its time-tested adoption of peaceful coexistence and respect of regional, internationally demarcated borders and especially as it related to those between Somalia and Somaliland.
Waddani was represented by its interim Chairman, Abdulkadir Jirdeh, Deputy Chairman, Abdirizak Khalif and Mohamed Arraleh Duur. For UCID there were Faisal Ali Warabe, Chairman, and Abdinassir – the Secretary-general.
On May 15, the Federal State of Somalia finally decided to engage in a head-on assault on Somaliland troops stationed in the vicinity of Tukaraq town some 65 kilometers inside the boundaries between colonial Somaliland and Somalia, ending running skirmishes in over 25 occasions which the Somalia militias kept shelling the Somaliland army positions.
The attack was timed to coincide with the 27th anniversary of the nation’s restoration of an independence it sacrificed for a Greater Somalia in 1960 in a first partnership with Italian Somalia. The union did not work culminating in a protracted civil war which cost citizens of former British Somaliland dearly but ended in the restoration of their independence in an all-clan resolution on May 18 1991.
The meeting, the first of its kind in a very long time in terms of its all-inclusive nature, once more showed the resilience and innate unity of a seasoned nation the likes of which the world has rarely seen.
