Friday, October 27, 2006
London - The president of Somalia's breakaway northwestern republic of Somaliland appealed for Britain's help in attaining international recognition as an independent state, in an interview published in the Daily Telegraph on Friday.
"How can a country that has met all the conditions of statehood be rejected by the international community?" president Dahir Rayale Kahin said in Hargeisa.
A former British protectorate, Somaliland united with the former Italian colony in the south in 1960 but unilaterally broke away from the rest of Somalia in 1991. While Somalia proper has degenerated into lawlessness, Somaliland has been relatively peaceful.
"We are struggling for recognition. We have fulfilled every condition, but the world has left us stateless. Our people have no enmity for the British. They have sympathy with the British. They want Britain to come again and recognise our independence," he said.
Although its repeated appeals for recognition have been ignored, it has held several elections deemed to have been free and fair and built up many institutions of statehood in its self-declared capital in Hargeisa.
Kahin warned of the consequences of Somaliland's potential collapse: "Many foreigners, including the British, will regret that they lost a friend in the Horn of Africa."
"We are really at the 11th hour here ... In my view, it is a race between a collapse and being recognised by the world and rebuilding our country."
Source: AFP, Oct. 27, 2006