Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, Islamist leader of the opposition faction which recently signed a peace deal with the Somali transitional government in Djibouti, arrived, for the first time in nearly two years, in central Somalitown of Jawhar amid tight security by Islamist fighters, opposition spokesman said Saturday.
The opposition leader along with a seven-member delegation arrived to meet with opposition figures inside Somalia and "explain to the Somali people the agreement reached" between the government and the opposition coalition known as the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS), Ahmed Abdulahi, ARS' Secretary for Information said.
"We will be staying inside the country as long as it takes to meet all the relevant people in Somalia," Abdullahi told Xinhua by phone from Jawhar, the provincial capital of Middle Shabelle region, 90 km north of the capital Mogadishu.
Thousands of cheering residents gathered along the roads leading from the airport to the city to give a rapturous welcome to Ahmed, who left the Horn of Africa country in early 2007 after his movement, the Islamic Courts Union, was driven out of power by allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces in December 2006.
The Islamist opposition leader, considered as moderate, is expected to visit a number of other places in south and central Somalia where his faction is in control.
Sheik Ahmed's moderate faction of the ARS, now based in Djibouti, late last month signed a ceasefire agreement and a power sharing deal after a number of other previous deals failed to stop the violence in the war-ravaged country.
Under the agreement both the transitional government and the ARS called upon their supporters and the Somali population "to adhere and support this cessation of armed confrontation in the interest of the Somalia".
The agreement also stipulates the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from specific areas in the capital Mogadishu and a central Somali town before their full withdrawal from Somalia.
They have also agreed on "the early establishment of a Somali Unity Government".
Other Somali insurgent groups, including the hard-line Al-Shabaab Islamist movement, oppose the agreement with the transitional government vowing they will continue to fight as long as the Ethiopian troops are in Somalia.
Source: Xinhua
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