PSC/PR/2 (CV) Rev.1 Page 3 my then Special Representative for Somalia, Ambassador Muhammad Ali Foum, insisted on the need to urgently establish a mechanism to ensure the implementation of the NRC recommendations. 10. Following the conclusion of the NRC, the TFG President, Abdullahi Yusuf, the then Prime Minister, Mohammed Ali Gedi, the Speaker of the TFP, Adam Mohammed Nour, the Chairman of the NGRC, Ali Mahdi, as well as tribal sheiks and other representatives of various Somali factions, travelled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Under the auspices of King Abdullah, the Somali leaders signed, on 16 September 2007, an agreement regarding the implementation of the recommendations made by the NRC. In the remarks he made on the occasion, King Abdullah urged the Somali parties to follow through the undertakings made, stressing that “reaching an agreement is the first step and must be followed by a full commitment to its provisions, as well as hard work to put it into practice”. On his part, President Abdullahi Yusuf called for the deployment of a joint Arab-African force in Somalia, under the command of the United Nations, to restore peace and security in his country, and urged all Somalis to back such a force. The agreement reached in Jeddah was rejected by the opposition groups, in particular the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). 11. In the meantime, the various opposition groups met in Asmara from 6 to 13 September 2007, where they held a parallel Congress, attended, among others, by representatives of UIC, the ‘Free Parliamentarians’ led by the former Speaker of the TFP, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, members of the Somali Diaspora and some clan leaders. The meeting agreed on the formation of an Alliance for the Liberation and Reconstitution of Somalia, with the stated aim of liberating Somalia from “Ethiopian occupation” and launching a political process that would involve all Somali stakeholders and rebuild the Somali state. The Alliance, which predicated talks with the TFG on an Ethiopian withdrawal from Somalia, elected Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a senior UIC member, as Chairman of its executive committee, while former TFP Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden was appointed Chairman of its Central Committee, which comprises 191 members. The TFG dismissed the Alliance as a terrorist one, stating that it did not pose a real threat. Furthermore, members of the opposition to the TFG, including from the Hawiye clan, disassociated themselves from the Asmara conference and its outcome. 12. On 10 September 2007, the International Contact Group (ICG) on Somalia met in Rome. The meeting, at which the AU was represented, welcomed the commitments of the NRC, as well as those of President Abdullahi Yusuf made at the closing session of the Congress to “pave a new political path that will win the confidence of the Somali people” and to continue the dialogue process. The ICG called upon the TFIs to implement in good faith the recommendations of the NRC, including the urgent elaboration of a roadmap for the remainder of the transitional period. During the meeting, the AU offered to host the next meeting of the ICG, at its headquarters, in Addis Ababa. Subsequently, the Commission initiated steps for this meeting to take place towards mid-December 2007. The idea was to organize this session of the ICG back-to-back with an AU-sponsored high-level meeting on Somalia that would bring together regional, continental and international stakeholders, with a view to re-focussing