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Hargeisa (SL Times) - Somaliland's Vice-President, Ahmed Yusuf Yassin, denied Thursday that President Rayale had agreed to take part in unconditional talks with KULMIYE’s leader, Ahmed Sillanyo.
Mr. Yassin’s comment came after Jamhuuriya newspaper ran a lengthy statement on Thursday by a group of journalists claiming to have been playing a mediator role, in order to reconcile existing differences between President Rayale and KULMIYE’s Ahmed Sillanyo that emerged in the aftermath of the April 14 presidential election.
In the statement, the group known as the Somaliland Journalists Association said both Rayale and Sillanyo had accepted a proposal for unconditional talks. However, Vice-President Yassin said the position of Mr. Rayale was that talks with KULMIYE were conditional on the opposition party first conceding the election.
Mr. Ahmed Yassin said the SOLJA statement was fabricated and was without basis. He also indicated that SOLJA was not an honest broker. The vice-president reaffirmed that only if that condition was met by KULMIYE, would negotiations start.
The Somaliland Times has learned that Somaliland's Minister of Information, Abdillahi Mohamed Dualle, had originally come up with the idea of SOLJA playing a mediator role. Sources told the Somaliland Times that the minister’s motive was to save his job in the face of the expected cabinet reshuffle. The minister of information also asked SOLJA's leaders to convey a message to president Rayale on how satisfied and delighted they were to have Abdillahi Dualle in the Ministry of Information.
But following SOLJA’s debacle, the whole mission was aborted, and reports say President Rayale was not impressed by SOLJA's claim of mediation.
Meanwhile, a group of Somaliland Sultans, Islamic clerics and civic leaders have taken the initiative to mediate a negotiated settlement of the present political conflict between President Rayale and his UDUB party on the one hand and the opposition KULMIYE party, led by Ahmed Sillanyo and Abdirahman Aw Ali. Both sides were understood to have welcomed the initiative.
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