Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed called crisis talks on Tuesday to find a new prime minister as the country’s shaky government faced a mounting challenge from Islamist rebels.
A day after Ali Mohamed Gedi resigned as prime minister after a long-running power struggle with the president, Yusuf met lawmakers and influential clan elders in the southern town of Baidoa, an official said.
”The president is consulting with members of Parliament and clan elders in order to get the proper person for the premiership post,” said Education Minister Ismail Mohamed Hurre.
”We are using this opportunity to reconcile and promote development … hostile talk is over,” he added.
Yusuf had blamed his prime minister for the failure to end the Islamist-led insurgency based around Mogadishu, draft a new Constitution and bolster the government.
He has named Deputy Prime Minister Salim Aliyow Ibrow as interim premier, but still faces a challenge finding a leader who can win the approval of the country’s fractious clans and Parliament as well deliver in his duties.
Critics accuse Gedi of causing Somalia’s renewed troubles by inviting Ethiopian forces to help vanquish the Islamist militants, a Taliban-like militia that ruled for six months, and were threatening to destroy the government.
The militia leadership derided Yusuf’s fresh nation-building attempt, warning that there would be no stability as long as arch-foe Ethiopia meddled in Somali affairs.
”There is no change in the political climate as long as the Ethiopia-imposed government is in Somalia,” said Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, Islamist leader exiled in the Eritrean capital.
”We will continue to liberate the people from Yusuf’s harsh leadership. We do not have anything to do with this government whether it makes changes or not. It does not represent the people of Somalia,” he added.
There is mounting tension among the remaining population in Mogadishu, a desolate city where Ethiopian-backed government forces are battling a ruthless insurgency.
”The fighting in Mogadishu is carried out by insurgents … as long as they do not recognise the government, the insecurity will continue and there will be no expections of peace,” said Mogadishu resident Asha Ismail, a mother of five.
Since January, after the Islamists were forced out, the violence has forced more than a third of the city’s one million people to leave their homes. Many have moved into squalid camps on the outskirts.
Those who remain faces threats from insurgents and gangs and violent crime that has transformed the city into a death trap.
The desperation and violence, worsened by natural calamities, has hampered humanitarian operations and again ended hopes by Western nations and the United Nations of creating a viable state.
Bloody clan brawls after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre has turned into near continuous civil war, worsened by the United States hunt of al-Qaeda linked extremists it believes are hiding in Somalia. – AFP
