MOGADISHU – The Somali government denied claims by the United Arab Emirates that previous governments approved Abu Dhabi’s Berbera port agreement with politicians from the northwestern region of Somalia.
The UAE state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, told the BBC that Somalia’s previous governments allowed Abu Dhabi to carry out humanitarian and developmental projects in the northwestern region of Somalia, even though the Gulf state doesn’t recognize the area that was agitating for independence since 1991 as a separate country.
“The understandings,” Gargash told the BBC, “was if we recognize a united Somalia – and that is our policy — that should not bar us from carrying out developmental, humanitarian and charitable activities etcetera” in the northwestern region.
But Somali Foreign Minister said Mogadishu had no record of any agreement between previous administrations and the UAE on the port of Berbera.
“If there was an agreement that was signed by the Somali federal government, there would have been no uproar,” he told a local TV station, Horn Cable. “The Somali government would have respected that agreement.”
In 2012, Former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the northwestern former leader, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamud Silanyo, met in the United Arab Emirates, but the two sides revealed no details about any tripartite agreement allowing Abu Dhabi develop the port of Berbera.
“The (United Arab) Emirates haven’t so far shown us any evidence of an agreement signed by the Somali federal government or even by previous governments” Awad said, adding that the word used by the United Arab Emirates’ State Minister Foreign Affairs Gargash in his BBC Arabic interview was “understanding.”
“There is a difference between agreement and understanding,” Awad said, adding that the Somali government is still waiting the UAE to produce any evidence showing that the national government signed the port of Berbera deal.
Also, Somalia’s immediate former president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, denied that his administration was part to the port of Berbera deal.
“We don’t have any knowledge of it. Nor are we aware of it,” he told Bulsho TV. “ No official party, be it the Somaliland administration or the government of (the United Arab) Emirates, has officially contacted us, talked with us about this issue. The Berbera port is a Somali port.”
During the interview, Awad disclosed that his government tried in vain to open dialogue with the UAE.
He, however, said that the media had exaggerated the extent of the differences between the two Arab League member states.
“If we had received that (evidence of agreement from the UAE), things wouldn’t have reached this stage,” he said.