NAIROBI: The United Nations and the European Union have warned that a dispute between Somalia’s president and prime minister could inflame tensions and undermine the country’s recovery from more than two decades of conflict.
Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed, an economist who has been running the cabinet since December 2013, fell out with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud last month over the composition of the new cabinet.
A similar row between Mohamud and the previous prime minister paralysed the government for months last year, leading to the eventual ouster of the then-prime minister by lawmakers.
The United Nations, the EU and other major donors worry another prolonged power vacuum would interrupt efforts to rebuild state institutions and defeat Al Qaeda-linked militants who control parts of the Horn of Africa country.
Nicholas Kay, UN special representative for Somalia, said late on Sunday he was “deeply concerned” over the political tensions between the two men and warned that the dispute could undermine progress ahead of planned elections in 2016.
“This (row) is already having an impact on the functioning of the federal institutions and Somalia’s state and peace building goals,” the EU’s Somalia envoy, Michele Cervone D’Urso, and the bloc’s Horn of Africa Special Representative, Alexander Rondos, added in a joint statement.
“We therefore urge all to desist immediately from actions that will only damage the country as it seeks to unify itself,” D’Urso and Rondos added. REUTERS
