SOMALIA - TFG PRIME MINISTER DETERMINED TO MOVE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DJIBOUTI 000945 SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/E E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/25/2018 TAGS: PGOV PINR SOCI SO ET DJ SUBJECT: SOMALIA - TFG PRIME MINISTER DETERMINED TO MOVE FORWARD WITHOUT PRESIDENT Classified By: NAIROBI SOMALIA UNIT COUNSELOR BOB PATTERSON. REASON: 1 .4 (B) AND (D). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY. In a long, November 25 meeting, Transitional Federal Government (TFG) Prime Minister Nur Adde reiterated his determination to move the Djibouti Process agenda forward without the participation of TFG President Yusuf. Nur Adde told Special Envoy for Somalia John Yates that he planned to travel to Baidoa November 26 in order to seek approval of his cabinet from what he hoped would be a quorum of parliamentarians. The PM signaled that the Government of Ethiopia was, at a minimum, aware and approved of his more decisive behavior since the October 29 IGAD Summit. November 24 - 25 closed-door negotiations by three-member TFG - Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) teams over the size of a unity government parliament were proceeding well, Nur Adde said, but he thought it unlikely that a unity government would be conclusively forged with the end of negotiations on the afternoon of November 25. END SUMMARY. -------------- SEEKING CERTIFICATION OF CABINET IN BAIDOA -------------- ¶2. (C) TFG Prime Minister Hassan Hussein Nur Adde opened his November 25 Djibouti meeting with Special Envoy for Somalia John Yates by previewing his intention to travel to Baidoa November 26 in order to seek ratification of his cabinet from what he hoped would be a quorum of Somali legislators. Like S/E Yates, Nur Adde believed that the remaining parliamentarians were finally being returned to Baidoa on five special flights during the week of November 24. ¶3. (C) TFG President Abdullahi Yusuf's repeated refusal to agree to Nur Adde's proposed cabinet had caused the Prime Minister to turn to the Parliament instead. Nur Adde admitted that parliamentary approval was not foreseen by the Transitional Federal Charter, but his long-running stand-off with Yusuf had forced him to go to extraordinary lengths in order to win legitimacy for his government. Nur Adde continued to prefer that Yusuf would endorse his cabinet choices but thought that further efforts to persuade the President at this point were pointless. -------------- DEALING WITH YUSUF -------------- ¶4. (C) S/E Yates recalled his November 20 - 21 Nairobi efforts to get Yusuf to compromise that ended in what he thought had been Yusuf's promise to travel to Mogadishu for a last-ditch effort with Nur Adde. S/E Yates predicted that Yusuf would complain that Nur Adde had violated the Charter if he sought approval by the Parliament. Noting that Yusuf had hosted another meal November 23 for the almost 170 parliamentarians stranded in Nairobi, Nur Adde accused the President of "constantly engaging in diversionary tactics." Later in the conversation, he detailed Yusuf's failure to acknowledge simple facts as examples of his ingrained obstructionism. After signing the October 29 IGAD final communique which obliged him to comply with a strict timetable of actions, for example, Yusuf had attempted to maintain that the requirements were "suggestions." "If we don't want IGAD to collapse, and we are members," Nur Adde said, "we have to abide by its decisions." Nur Adde alleged that during Yusuf's tenure "not one article of Transitional Federal Charter" had been implemented. ¶5. (C) On Yusuf's watch, Nur Adde noted still later in the conversation, all decisions had been "personalized." Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Abdisalam Aden, who accompanied the Prime Minister at the meeting, agreed, noting that "Yusuf never discusses his criteria for selection; it is too often only who he likes or dislikes." Yusuf's conduct of his presidency is "too personalized," Abdisalam said, and he urged the international community, if it thought Yusuf still had a role to play, to specify to Yusuf the compromises that it envisioned. ¶6. (C) In an acknowledgment that he was coordinating his actions with the Government of Ethiopia, Nur Adde assured S/E Yates that "the IGAD Chair was okay with" his actions. Still, he had taken the decision to proceed without Yusuf not because of IGAD. The prospective TFG - ARS unity government had forced him to attempt to end the state of perpetual crisis that had hounded the TFG. Yusuf, Nur Adde said, was DJIBOUTI 00000945 002 OF 002 even now playing a destructive role in what he alleged were efforts to bypass the TFG and deal directly with the ARS in order to himself be the author of a unity government and terminally split the TFG. The time of compromise was over, Nur Adde said. "There is no willingness (on Yusuf's part) to compromise." -------------- HIGH-LEVEL COMMITTEE NEGOTIATIONS: TFG VIEW -------------- ¶7. (C) Nur Adde had been briefed by his TFG technical team (which conducted closed-door negotiations with its ARS counterparts November 24). There had been tough talks on power-sharing, expanding the size of the parliament, and mechanisms for electing a speaker and president. Nur Adde had told his team to limit discussion November 25 to expansion of the parliament, as it was "too early" for discussions of decisions on the future of the speaker and the president. Nur Adde predicted that a unity government agreement would not be signed November 25. He forecast an optimistic declaration, that would note that significant progress had occurred. As in virtually every meeting with us, Nur Adde closed the meeting with a plea that the international community fund a proposed 10,000-strong TFG - ARS military force as soon as possible. ¶8. (C) COMMENT. Nur Adde in this November 25 conversation remained resolved to push ahead without Yusuf, and seemed unperturbed by the efforts of the President to end-run the Djibouti Process and IGAD through trips to Tripoli and Khartoum. He also took in stride Yusuf's alleged efforts to work directly with ARS, and his continued courting of parliamentarians. Nur Adde's indifference was mirrored by the indifference of ARS Chairman Sheikh Sharif in a November 24 conversation with S/E Yates (septel). Both regard the President as a spent force, and Yusuf's failure, despite days of threats, to travel to Djibouti and insert himself directly into the unity government negotiations, will likely only harden their resolve to proceed without him. END COMMENT. SWAN