Ethiopia confirmed on Sunday that it had withdrawan all of its troops from Somalia.
Bereket Simon, head of the newly-established Government Communication Affairs Office, told journalists that the country's defense force had been fully withdrawn from Somalia after successfully completing its mission in that country.
Meanwhile, the official Ethiopian news agency reported that the Ethiopian forces, who left the Somali southern town of Baidoa, had arrived at the Ethiopian border town of Dolo.
The Ethiopian troops crossed over to Somalia to prop up the Somali transitional government and crush the Islamists who were in control in most of the southern and central regions in the second half of 2006.
The move to withdraw from Baidoa came a week after the Ethiopian troops pulled out of their bases in the Somali capital Mogadishu. The withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops is part of a wide-ranging peace and power-sharing deal reached between the Somali transitional government and the main opposition coalition, the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).
The two sides are now meeting in Djibouti City, the capital of the northwestern neighbor of Somalia, to work out a power- sharing arrangement stipulated in the agreement signed last year.
Under the agreement, the membership of the current Somali parliament will be doubled to include 200 members from ARS and 75 from Somali civil society groups, women and diasporas.
The expanded assembly will select a new speaker and the president, and a National Unity Government will be formed in a week before the one-month deadline set in the Somali Transitional Federal Charter for the selection of a new president after the resignation of former Somali leader Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed on Dec. 29.
(Xinhua News Agency January 26, 2009)