Special Representative of UN Secretary-General to Visit Egypt and Ethiopia on Peace Mission for Somalia

..............................................................................................

The Secretary General's Special Representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, will visit Egypt and Ethiopia this weekend for consultations on the Somali peace process.

Mr. Fall is expected to meet on Saturday (27 August) with Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit and later, the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Amre Moussa. On Sunday (28 August) he will travel to Ethiopia to meet with the Chairman of the Commission of the African Union, Alpha Omar Konare. While in Addis Ababa he is also expected to meet with the Ethiopian authorities.

Mr. Fall is in close contact with the leaders of the Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) in an effort to help them resolve their differences and advance the peace process. Somali President, Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed and his Prime Minister, Ali Mohammed Gedi, maintain that Mogadishu is not secure and that the seat of government should be temporarily established in Jowhar and Baidoa until the Capital can be made safe. The Speaker of the Parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, some cabinet members and a large number of Parliamentarians, insist that conditions are adequate for the Government to relocate to Mogadishu.

Mr. Fall met in Nairobi, Kenya with the Speaker on 17 and 24 August. He met separately with Prime Minister Gedi on 18 August and President Yusuf on 19 August.

For more information please contact: UN Political Office for Somalia(Nairobi, Kenya) Tel. +254 20 762 21 31 Please visit: www.UN-Somalia.org