Kenya Defence Forces troops are likely to be redeployed to interior parts of Somalia following a high-level meeting between Foreign Affairs CS Dr Monica Juma and her Somalia counterpart Ahmed Awad, it has emerged.
Last month, KDF troops were reported to have been withdrawn from several parts of Somalia towards the border with the controversial auctioning of oil wells at the border of Kenya and Somalia at the Indian Ocean said to have precipitated the situation.
Dr Juma, whose ministry works together with that of defence, said that Nairobi will 'normalise' her relationship with Mogadishu following the high-level diplomatic meeting.
"We reaffirmed our strong desire to normalise relations and agreed, as a first step, to have our ambassadors return to station," Dr Juma wrote on her Twitter page after meeting Awad in Nairobi.
The meeting with the Somali top diplomat, a former envoy to the US, was said to be on "outstanding issues between Kenya and Somalia, in particular, concerns arising out of the London conference of 7th February 2019."
This was in reference to the event where Somalia was accused of auctioning oil blocks in an area contested by Kenya.
In February this year, Kenya withdrew her ambassador from Somalia, citing 'outstanding issues' as the reason behind the diplomatic move. Earlier, Somalia ambassador to Nairobi had also been ejected.
In March, Somalia's President Mohammed Farmajo arrived in Nairobi for talks with President Uhuru Kenyatta but State House did not brief about the outcome of the meeting, an indication of a possibility that nothing was agreed upon.
The withdrawal of the KDF troops is said to have caught both Somalia and Amisom off guard thus, the decision to call for a truce.
The soldiers left the military base of Busar even though KDF Communication Director Col Paul Njuguna was hesitant to comment on the development.