A well-known
warlord in northern Somalia will arrive here on Saturday to
attend the ongoing Peace Conference of Somalia, a member of
the transitional parliament of the east African country told
Xinhua on Friday.
Mohammed
Abshir Muse, a doyen in the transitional parliament, said,
"Abdillahi Yussouf, now in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is due to
fly in here Saturday." Yussouf, over 70, has been a top leader
of Puntland which declared independence in July of 1998.
He had
formerly rejected the invitation by Djibouti President Ismael
Omar Guelleh to attend the peace talks held in Djibouti, the
12th of its kind since 1991.
The leader
had claimed that he would not come to the meeting unless he
was promised a key post either in the new parliament or in
the new cabinet.
It is
generally believed that Yussouf's participation of the peace
talks will throw his weight to the importance of the meeting
which is designed to put an end to the 10-year-old civil war
in Somalia.
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