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Sunday, February 08, 2009
Mogadishu, Somalia (APA) - The newly elected Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the commanders of the police, military, and national security services held their first face-to face talks on security issues, since he arrived in the Somali capital on Saturday.
The Somali government spokesman Abdi Hajji Goob Doon who talked to reporters at the presidential palace after the meeting said that President Sheikh Sharif has formed a joint committee from the Transitional Federal Government and his Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia to prepare new ways of tightening security in the capital.
“This committee will work on ways of reuniting TFG forces and the militias loyal to the ARSa who are now based in different positions in the capital and other parts of the country,” the government spokesman said during a press conference on Sunday.
“The president has ordered the newly formed special committee to suddenly draw up plans of tightening security in the capital and then the entire regions of the country and we hope this will be a step forward,” he added.
The spokesman added that the joint forces will then be engaged in a big security operation in and outside the capital.
Sunday’s meeting on peace and security issues was the first of its kind to be held since the moderate Islamist president returned home from exile on Saturday.
“Sheikh Sharif succeeded in introducing peace and stability into much of Somalia in the second half of 2006 when he was the chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, and and as such, many Somalis are now very hopeful that he may once again bring peace to lawless Somalia,” the government spokesman told reporters.
Somalia has lacked a functioning government since the 1991 downfall of former military ruler General Mohamed Siyad Barre. Wars and famine have killed more than half a million people and displaced hundreds of thousands, while thousands more sought refuge into foreign nations since then.
Source: APA, Feb 08, 2009