ef: SSE/Fr-0020/15

PRESS STATEMENT

Time for re-casting the failed Somaliland-Somalia talks about the union that ended nearly 25 years ago

The 2012 initiated talks and their demise

It was recognised at the (international) June 2012 London Conference that there was a need for the international community to support any dialogue between Somaliland and the then Somalia government or its replacement may agree to establish in order to clarify   their future relations. Having waited for decades to see a government in Somalia with which it can discuss the formalities of laying the defunct union to rest, the nationally elected government of the Republic of Somaliland agreed, for the first time since Somalilands re-assertion of its sovereignty in May 1991, to enter into talks with the whichever government that was formed for Somalia.  The talks between the government of Somaliland and the current government of Somalia which were facilitated by Turkey since 2013 have recently come to an end.  This came as no surprise to us, as we have warned in our Statement of 30 October 2014 that it was –

increasingly becoming clear that the current Somalia government is neither willing to implement the only substantive agreement (on the joint control and management of civil aviation) reached so far in the talks,  nor prepared to countenance that the talks will lead to anything other than a re-union of Somaliland and Somalia, as repeatedly stated by its leaders.  It is also clear that Somaliland will never accept anything other than an amiable agreement to lay to rest the defunct union as has been repeatedly stated by the successive nationally elected leaders of Somaliland.

The current Somalian government, emboldened perhaps by the recognition and support bestowed on it by the international community, has been undermining the talks by including (provokingly and contrary to previous agreement) in its delegates persons from Somaliland and by other various overt and covert steps, which Somalilanders believe, are aimed at  undermining the unity and peace among the Somaliland communities. The latest incident,