ADDIS ABABA (Somaliguardian) – The United States said on Friday it had set firm expectations for Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, to make progress on security and accountability, in what some analysts described as an undiplomatic announcement.
Mr. Mohamud met with Nick Checker, the senior bureau official leading the United States Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs, at the African Union.
In a statement issued after the meeting, the bureau said Mr. Checker “expressed appreciation for cooperation on counterterrorism but set firm expectations for progress on security and accountability.”
Some Somali analysts said that both the president’s meeting with a senior bureau official and the public declaration that the American official had set firm expectations for a foreign head of state were undiplomatic.
The episode comes amid mounting frustration in Washington with the Somali federal government in Mogadishu, where dysfunction and political uncertainty have come to define governance, despite sustained international support aimed at stabilizing the country and ending the nearly two-decade-long insurgency by Al-Shabaab.
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