United Nations Special Representative to Attend IGAD - Ministerial Meeting in Somalia this Week

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Nairobi - 28 November 2005: The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Somalia (SRSG), Francois Lonseny Fall, will travel to Jowhar tomorrow (29 November) for a Ministerial Meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) (*). It will be the first time the IGAD Council of Ministers has met inside Somalia.

Welcoming this week's initiative, Ambassador Fall said: “No part of the international community has greater responsibility towards Somalia than IGAD. The Somali National Reconciliation process and Transitional Federal Institutions that emerged from Eldoret and Mbagathi are very much IGAD's ‘babies'. As ‘parents' of these fragile institutions, IGAD has a special responsibility and the United Nations is committed to helping it to fulfill this responsibility.”

This week's initiative is in line with the Security Council's request urging IGAD, the African Union, the League of Arab States, European Union and concerned Member States, to leverage their influence to ensure that Somalia's Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) reconcile their differences peacefully.

(*) IGAD Member States are: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.