By: Yusuf M Hasan
ADDIS ABABA (Somalilandsun) – “The Government in London is committed to its diplomatic relations and developmental cooperation with Somaliland”
This was revealed by the deputy British ambassador to Ethiopia during a meeting with a Somaliland government team composed of interior minister Mohamed Ali Waran’ade and Aviation minister Mahmud Abdi Hashi in the the Ethiopian Capital Addis Ababa where the UK said that Somaliland even without international recognition remains an important partner and major integral member of Britain’s multi-sectored interventions in the Horn of Africa region.
The Waran’ade led team is in Addis Ababa to negotiate the resumption of suspended flights by Ethiopian Airlines which recently withdrew the Somaliland route from its schedule.
The reaffirmation of London’s enhancement of cooperation with the Horn Africa country which is a former British protectorate comes at a very crucial moment for Somaliland citizens who have in the recent past been filled with rumours of Britain’s animosity towards the government in Hargeisa especially for refusal to attend the Somalia conference II hosted by PM Cameroon in London mid this year.
This also dispels insinuations that the purported animosity directed towards Hargeisa has ensued with the UK’s government covert machinations against local interest as support for the SFG in Mogadishu which has two decades been contesting the withdrawal of Somaliland from its voluntary 1960 union with then Italian Somalia to form the now defunct Republic of Somalia.
Incidentally Britain is among the top donors to various development projects and humanitarian interventions in its former colony that remains unrecognized internationally as a sovereign state.
