Somali president arrives in Mogadishu - source
Source: Reuters
By Guled Mohamed MOGADISHU, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf entered Mogadishu on Monday to cap a remarkable turn-around in the capital Islamists ruled for six months until they were ousted before the New Year, a government source said. If confirmed, the arrival of Yusuf protected by his own soldiers plus Ethiopian troops who helped the government drive out the Islamists, would be the 72-year-old veteran soldier's first time in Mogadishu since taking office in 2004. "The president has arrived in Mogadishu. He is now resting at Nasa Hablod hotel. We are now preparing his house in Villa Somalia, where he will be staying," a government source who declined to be named, told Reuters. The bullet-scarred Villa Somalia compound is the former presidential palace of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, whose 1991 ouster as Somalia's last national president in 1991 triggered more than 15 years of anarchy. Information Minister Ali Ahmed Jama "Jangali" declined to confirm Yusuf's arrival, but said: "It is possible the president might arrive in Mogadishu today." Witnesses in the Kilometre Four area, a main entry point to Mogadishu, said they saw a convoy of eight SUVs accompanied by 15 technicals -- pick-up trucks with heavy guns -- five troop transport trucks and hundreds of soldiers. "President Abdullahi Yusuf has just arrived. He has just passed Kilometre 4. He is escorted by hundreds of government troops and has driven towards Villa Somalia," resident Abdikadir Abdullahi told Reuters by telephone from the area. After several protests and attacks against Ethiopian occupying troops in recent days, the streets of Mogadishu were under heavy security on Monday, witnesses said. Thousands of mainly Somali soldiers were on patrol. OUTSIDER GOES IN Yusuf had stayed out of Mogadishu, where he is an outsider and still has many enemies from his time as warlord based in the semi-autonomous northern Puntland region. But in a war that took just two weeks, government troops backed by the Ethiopian military ran Islamist fighters out of southern Somalia, smashing them with the superior Ethiopian military might of tanks and attack helicopters. Ethiopian and Somali soldiers are pursuing defeated Islamist fighters in remote corners of the south, while neighbouring Kenya has sealed its borders. That has left several thousand would-be Somali refugees caught in appalling conditions with little food and shelter on their side of the border, locals say. The Somali government, meanwhile, is struggling to gain control of and disarm Mogadishu. Gunmen shot at Ethiopian troops over the weekend and Somalis have been taking to the streets and burning tyres in protests against their presence. Somalis and Ethiopians have a rivalry stretching back for generations, and the Islamists had whipped up nationalist fervour against them in the build-up to the war. The Ethiopian troops are due to leave in two weeks, to be replaced by a proposed African peacekeeping force eventually envisioned to be 8,000 strong. The government admits its fledgling security forces cannot hold the country on their own. So far, only Uganda has committed to send troops if its parliament approves the deployment. The African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council was to meet in Ethiopia later on Monday to discuss Somalia. Kenyan Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju is due to tour African capitals soon to solicit soldiers. Nigeria and South Africa have made comments about contributing troops, diplomats say. The top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, on Sunday flew home after a regional trip to gain support for the peacekeeping mission and said the United States would give $16 million to help fund it. Yusuf, whose election at the Somali peace process in Kenya in October 2004 was engineered by Ethiopia with the support of other countries in the region, has long asked for foreign troops to help his fractious government take control of Somalia.
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