Somalia's most stable region, the breakaway Somaliland enclave, expressed opposition on Tuesday to new Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, underscoring its hostility to a man long seen as the territory's arch foe. The Somaliland government warned Yusuf, a warlord elected head of state on October 10th by lawmakers at peace talks held in Kenya, against any attempted aggression and said it was on alert against any move to reunite Somaliland with the rest of Somalia.

The Acting United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, Mr Jesper Morch appeals to the international donor community to make contributions to the Humanitarian Response Fund for Somalia. Since April 2004, the Fund has disbursed over US$1 million to international NGOs for projects in prioritised drought and conflict affected areas of Somalia, including Gedo, Lower Juba, Sool, Sanaag, Bari and Nugal regions. The Fund is almost completely exhausted, while the needs on the ground are increasing with the failure of the recent rainy season.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) plans to expand its school-feeding project in Somalia once a government has been re-established and security restored in all areas to facilitate the revival of the Horn of Africa country's poor education system, a senior WFP official said. Robert Hauser, WFP's country director for Somalia told IRIN, "The education sector at the moment is the highest priority of the UN system and of most of the donor community also."

The African Union (AU) has welcomed recent progress made towards the reestablishment of a functioning government in Somalia and urged the international community to assist the country's national institutions once they are fully installed, the AU said in a statement sent on Thursday. The 275 members of the assembly are due to elect the country's president on 10 October. The president will in turn appoint a prime minister, who will be required to form a government.

RSF has condemned a 22 September 2004 raid by militiamen on a local FM radio station in Mogadishu, in which a security guard was roughed up and a journalist was threatened and detained. The operation was ordered by a local Islamic court, after being prompted by a dispute between two businessmen.

A Somali warlord, who has returned to the peace process in neighbouring Kenya, says he will not contest in the presidential elections next month. General Morgan's forces battled those of a rival faction around the southern port of Kismayo earlier this month. He was the only major faction leader not taking part in the parliament tasked with electing a president.

Fresh fighting in Somalia, the only country without a central government, cast a shadow over an anti-war rally by Somali politicians on the 21st of September for International Peace Day. Hundreds of Somalis have fled to Kenya this month to escape violence in the volatile south of the country stirred by warring militias battling for control of the port of Kismayo. "It is a pity to see there are some people who don't believe that the state of fighting is over," Joseph Nyaga, Kenya's assistant minister of East African and Regional Cooperation, told the rally.

Some 500 people fleeing factional fighting near the southern Somali port city of Kismayo crossed the border into Kenya at the end of last week and are now living with local communities on the Kenyan side of the frontier, a spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. Most of the Somalis came from the village of Dhobley, not far from the border, and entered Kenya through the border town of Liboi.

Libya has started expelling hundreds of Somalis that had tried and failed to reach Europe. Those on board the first flight have been talking about their ordeals in Libyan prisons and the dangers they faced as they tried to make it to a better life overseas. Mogadishu human rights groups estimate that nearly 2,000 Somalis have either drowned in the Red and Mediterranean seas or disappeared into the long desert between Sudan and Libya over the past six years.

I first met Hassan Saeed Yusuf, the editor of Jamhuriya, in Hargeisa central prison in June 1992. Since then, I have visited him there several times, most recently just over a week ago. Jailed by all three presidents of Somaliland, Hassan has been arrested 15 times since 1992. On eight occasions, he has spent time, ranging from five days to a month, in Hargeisa central prison; other times he has been locked up in various police cells. Each time, however, he has been released, for lack of evidence, sometimes aided by international pressure; no court has ever brought a judgment against him.

Hassan's latest brush with the law came just after midnight on 31 August. Policemen came to his office to arrest him in connection with an article he had published that day about the Somali peace talks in Kenya. The article quoted from interviews with Somali delegates to the talks, including some politicians who claimed that the opposition in Somaliland, rather than the government, has taken a hard-line against the prospects of any possible reunification with Somalia.

Given what is at stake, the independence of Somaliland is a sensitive political topic, domestically, regionally and internationally, making it all the more important to have a robust public debate so that the public can make informed judgements. Journalists, like other Somalilanders, have the right to know what the government and the opposition are thinking, and doing, about crucial issues that affect all of us as individuals, and which will determine our collective political future. More than that, they have a responsibility to shine a search light on what politicians would often prefer to hide. If the government wanted to challenge the veracity of these claims, it has many opportunities to make its view heard. Imprisoning Hassan will only fuel speculation that it has reason to be secretive on this issue.

Several people have been killed in fighting between rival militias in southern Somalia. Militiamen loyal to the Jubba Valley Alliance, which controls the port of Kismayo, clashed with fighters loyal to warlord General Morgan, the only major warlord outside a peace process which has chosen a new Somali parliament. The area has been tense in recent weeks, as Morgan's forces have advanced on Kismayo.

Somalia's new parliament has elected a speaker, bringing the war-torn nation a step closer to establishing its first central government in 13 years. Businessman Shariff Hassan Sheikh Adan was elected to the post with 161 votes, ahead of his nearest rival's 105 votes. In all, 267 MPs voted during a six-hour session in neighbouring Kenya's capital looked on by observers and mediators.

Women members of Somalia's newly created transitional federal parliament plan to move a motion seeking a constitutional amendment to increase the number of seats reserved for women in the assembly, one of the MPs said on Monday. The women have complained that delegates attending the Somali national reconciliation conference in the Kenya capital, Nairobi, flouted the National Charter when they failed to adhere to the provision that at least 12 percent of the members be women.

The swearing-in of Somalia's transitional parliament on 22 August in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and the first meeting of the MPs days later may have gone smoothly, but the real challenges facing the war-ravaged Horn of Africa country have just begun, analysts say. "History is littered with dishonoured Somali peace accords. In fact, no major international peace initiative for Somalia has ever failed to produce one," Matt Bryden, an analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.

Residents in the southern Somali port of Kismayo are reported to be nervous that forces loyal to warlord General Morgan are planning an assault. The advance is being resisted by the Juba Valley Alliance militia, and there were reports of skirmishes outside the town on Sunday. General Morgan has refused to join the latest Somali peace talks, or take up a seat in the planned transitional parliament set up in Kenya last month.

Reporters Without Borders has called for the immediate release of the editor of the independent daily paper Jamhuuriya, Hassan Said Yusuf, who was arrested on 1 September for the 15th time in the past decade in Hargeisa, capital of the self-styled state of Somaliland. It called on the government to explain his detention by a dozen police who burst into the paper's offices late at night with an arrest warrant as he and his staff were preparing the next day's edition of the paper and took him to the city's main police station.

A US-based press freedom watchdog has urged authorities in Somaliland, the self-declared republic in northwestern Somalia, to release the editor-in-chief of two newspapers arrested at the end of last month. New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that Hassan Said Yusuf, the editor-in-chief of the independent Somali-language daily, Jamhuuriya, and its weekly English-language edition, The Republican, was picked up from his office in Hargeisa, Somaliland's capital, on 31 August.

The European Union and the United States have welcomed the setting up of Somalia's transitional federal parliament, a move that paves the way for the formation of an all inclusive government in Somalia. "The European Union commends the efforts of Somali leaders in achieving this significant outcome and calls upon them to ensure that the same spirit of positive cooperation prevails during the remainder of the reconciliation process," a statement by the EU presidency in Brussels on Tuesday said.

Women from Somalia have expressed concern at the fact that they risk being under-represented in their country's new transitional parliament, which was sworn in Sunday, August 22. According to an agreement reached in negotiations for restoring central government in the East African nation, a minimum of 12 percent of the 275 legislators should be women. However, only 16 women were inaugurated as members of parliament at the swearing in ceremony.

Some 206 members of the Somali transitional federal parliament took oath of office on Sunday, paving the way for the formation of a government in the Horn of Africa country that has been ravaged by factional violence since 1991. A total of 214 MPs were scheduled to swear-in, but eight did not make it to the ceremony held in the United Nations complex in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, officials said.