MOGADISHU, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The leader of the northeastern Somali region of Puntland Mohamud Muse Hersi has rejected the recent power-sharing deal reached in Djibouti between the Somali government and a major opposition faction.
Hersi said that the Djibouti agreement could lead to the breakup of the war-torn horn of Africa country, saying the deal was signed by "men from a single clan".
He said that the deal does not respect clan representation in Somalia.
"This agreement will escalate further the political crisis in the country and we oppose it completely," Hersi said in a news conference in Garowe, the capital of Puntland.
The semiautonomous region, which had been previously led by the current Somali President Abdulahi Yusuf, has supported the central Somali government since its formation in 2004.
President Yusuf, who has been in Puntland for the past week, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the Djibouti peace deal spearheaded by his Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein.
Under the UN-brokered power-sharing agreement, the membership of the Somali parliament will be doubled with 275 new members to be included, 200 of which will come from the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), while 75 will go to members of the Somali civil society groups, Somalis in the Diaspora, and women.
The new parliament is expected to elect "new leadership" for the country within a period of thirty days from the signing of the agreement which was concluded late last month.
The Puntland leader called on the United Nations to organize another peace conference for Somalia which, he said, should bring all stakeholders together.
Somali Prime minster Nur Hassan Hussein will next week ask Somali parliament to approve the Djibouti agreement as well as his new cabinet which the Somali president has refused to endorse
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