Original source: XinhuaNet
BAIDAO, Somalia/ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- Somalia and Ethiopia have both confirmed the complete withdrawal of Ethiopia troops from the war-wrecked horn of African nation.
The last Ethiopian soldiers had left their base in the southern Somali town of Baidoa, a senior Somali government official said on Monday.
Baidoa is the seat of the Somali parliament and the last place in the country where the Ethiopian troops remained after two years in the country.
'I can confirm you that there is no single Ethiopian soldier in Baidoa today (Monday) and if what the insurgent forces were fighting was the foreign forces, they have now left the town and I see no reason for further violence,' Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade, a senior Somali cabinet minister, told Xinhua in Baidoa, 245 km southwest of Mogadishu.
He said he is aware that the insurgents, who are now surrounding Baidoa, have been threatening to enter the town since the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops in the early hours of Monday morning.
Habsade revealed that there are indirect talks with the insurgents for a peaceful resolution of the standoff, saying that local elders are mediating between the two sides.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia confirmed on Sunday that it had withdrawn all of its troops from Somalia.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Government Communication Affairs Office, told journalists that the country's defense force had been fully withdrawn from Somalia after successfully completing its mission in that country.
The official Ethiopian news agency reported on Sunday 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.
In Somalia, spokesman for Al-Shabaab Sheik Muqtar Robow Abu Mansuur, has said following the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops, his fighters, who control now most of the villages and towns around Baidoa, will 'peacefully take over the town' which is guarded by small number of local militia and Somali government forces.
The local militias and Somali government forces in battle wagons can be seen protecting government targets and taking positions around the town in preparation for a possible assault from the insurgents.
'If the militias and the government forces in the town try to resist we will kill them all but if they do not fight us we have nothing against them,' Abu Mansuur told reporters in Baidoa by phone.
Al-Shabaab, which is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization and opposes the peace deal with the government by another insurgent faction, controls large swathes of territory in the south and center of the country.
The withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops from Somalia 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).
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 Somali government and the ARS are meeting now in Djibouti City, the capital of the northwestern neighbor of Somalia, to workout a power-sharing arrangement stipulated in the agreement signed last year.
Most of the Somali lawmakers are in Djibouti to hold a session to amend the national charter to allow the parliamentary expansion and a possible extension of the one-month deadline for the planned presidential election, which will expire this week after the resignation of former Somali leader Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed on Dec. 29.
Reports from Djibouti City said that leader of the ARS Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, has been formally nominated as the sole candidate of the opposition to run for the presidency.
