Somalia's feuding president and parliament speaker on Thursday signed an agreement in Yemen pledging to unify the lawless country's fractured transitional government, earning praise from the United Nations but widespread scepticism from war-weary locals at home. In a joint statement closing nearly a week of intense discussions in the Yemeni port city of Aden, they vowed to resolve their differences but gave no sign that the core problem — a dispute over the seat of the government — had been resolved. In the statement, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan pledged to work together for the good of Somalia's population of 10 million, who have faced chronic unrest and warlord rule since the country fractured 15 years ago. "Both leaders have reached to start a new page and end their differences, which have brought serious damage to the discharge of the duties and responsibilities of the institutions, in a spirit of cooperation on which the Somali people were pinning their highest hopes," they said. "Both leaders jointly call upon the members of the parliament and government to put aside their fruitless squabbles and differences, urging them to come together and unite, placing the supreme interests of the nation above selfishness," they said.
In what was identified as the "Aden Declaration" mediated by Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yusuf and Adan also called on parliament to meet in Somalia within 30 days at an as-yet undetermined location.