KENYA

Somali Islamist forces backed by 4 000 foreign fighters are moving into position for an attack on the interim government’s base, Somalia’s prime minister said on Wednesday. ”I don’t think that they are ready for dialogue, for peace and stability to prevail in Somalia. In that case, war may become inevitable,” Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said.

The Kenyan Parliament’s decision to raise President Mwai Kibaki’s salary by 186% has outraged many in the East African nation where more than half the population lives on less than a day. Parliament voted this week to raise Kibaki’s monthly salary to nearly  000 a month, plus allowances of  600, officials said.

The death toll from catastrophic floods that have hit East Africa has risen to more than 250, aid workers said on Friday as rains continued to pound the impoverished region. Floods have hit Kenya, Somalia, Rwanda and Ethiopia, with tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes, aid agencies said. Disease from poor sanitation is also taking its toll.

At least 20 people have died in northern Somalia after an outbreak of diarrhoea, sparked by heavy flooding, bringing the death toll to 116, the United Nations said on Wednesday. About one million Somalis are estimated to be affected by the flooding, according to the UN.

Facing mounting pressure to declare a national disaster, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki pledged to help hundreds of thousands of people affected by floods as the death toll hit 51, officials said on Wednesday. Kibaki said the "government is assisting communities affected by floods occasioned by the ongoing rains", his office reported in a statement.

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi vowed on Monday that his government, backed by Ethiopia, would take Mogadishu from powerful Islamists now controlling the city, fuelling war fears. With forces loyal to his weak administration and Ethiopian soldiers reinforcing the government seat of Baidoa, Gedi said he had an obligation to act.

Somalia has replaced Sudan as the ”epicentre of jihadism” in East Africa since the rise of a powerful Islamist movement, according to an author who has just finished a book on the Horn of Africa nation. ”The most potent expression of jihadism in the region has occurred in stateless Somalia,” says Gregory Alonso Pirio.

Environment ministers ground their way towards the end of a 12-day climate summit on Friday, squabbling over a blueprint for negotiating the next round of carbon pollution curbs under the United Nations’s Kyoto Protocol. The talks gathered members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Cool seasonal rains have slowed the march to war between Somalia’s Islamic militants and the secular government, but in the weeks ahead the tropical sun will break through the clouds, dry the muddy roads, shrink the flooded rivers and, many fear, ignite a civil war.

Kenya on Wednesday appealed for aid to help hundreds of thousands of people hit by devastating and deadly floods across the country, triggered by unusually heavy seasonal rains. As rains continued to pound north and coastal Kenya, authorities made a national appeal for almost -million to help about 300 000 people who are affected by the floods, which have so far killed 23 people.

The United Nations has not given up on sending its own troops to reinforce a peacekeeping force in Darfur, despite strong Sudanese opposition, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters in Nairobi, Annan also described the situation on Sudan’s border with Chad as ”very fragile and volatile”.

An independent commission will demarcate the Ethiopian-Eritrean border on maps and leave the rival nations to establish the physical boundary themselves, a letter obtained by Reuters on Tuesday shows. ”The commission has decided that it will complete the process of demarcation by the use of coordinates to establish fixed points … ,” the November 7 letter said.

A Nigerian banker was named African Business Leader of 2006 in a competition to honour major contributors to economic development. Tony Elumelu, chief executive officer of the Lagos-based United Bank for Africa, was hailed by United Kingdom-based African Investor magazine as a believer in excellence.

Nigerian Nobel Literature laureate Wole Soyinka has called on the world to shut its doors on the government of Sudan for ”genocide” in Darfur. ”Two million people are squatting in their own country, facing genocide by their own government,” he said during a visit to Nairobi.

On the sidelines of a key United Nations climate-change conference in Nairobi, Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai on Wednesday launched a massive drive aimed at curbing global warming and related environmental damage by planting a billion new trees by the end of next year.