Somali PM dismisses cabinet in drive for unity


BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) – Somalia’s new prime minister dismissed his cabinet on Sunday, in a new push to unify an interim government crippled by a power-sharing row.

“After meeting my ministers I decided to form a new government,” Nur Hussan Hussein told a news conference in the southern trading town of Baidoa where parliament is based.

Hussein’s announcement came barely two weeks after five senior officials quit his cabinet, complaining that their clans had not been sufficiently represented.

In addition, many ministers returned from earlier cabinets, and only a handful came from outside parliament — a move permitted for the first time by a constitutional change to bring in more experienced technocrats.

As a result of the deadlock, parliament failed to endorse the line-up forcing Hussein to go back to the drawing board.

“The international community expressed their displeasure with the number of ministers chosen from outside the parliament,” Hussein noted, saying half the new cabinet would be selected from parliament, the rest from outside.

Hussein’s appointment late last month was widely seen as an opportunity for reconciliation in a government paralysed by infighting since its formation three years ago.

Political turmoil has all but thwarted the government’s efforts to stem an Islamist-led insurgency, helping to create what the U.N. says is Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.

On Sunday, a leader of the Islamists’ military wing announced plans to intensify its offensive against government troops and their Ethiopian allies.

“ENORMOUS ATTACKS”

In his first comments to Reuters since going into hiding a year ago, Muktar Ali Robow said al-Shabab had killed nearly 500 Ethiopian soldiers and would fight until foreign troops left the Horn of Africa country.

“We are now planning to launch the most enormous attacks on the government and Ethiopian main positions. We will allow no foreign forces in our land,” Robow said in a phone interview.

“We have raided the enemies’ military bases showering them with mortar shells.”

Robow did not give away his location, but said he was in the southern Bay province of Somalia.

Also known as “Abu Mansoor”, Robow was the Islamic Courts’ deputy defence secretary before the movement that ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for six months was ousted by allied Somali-Ethiopian forces in the New Year.

His al-Shabab has since spearheaded an Iraq-style insurgency, waging near-daily roadside bombings, grenade attacks and shootings against government and Ethiopian positions.

The conflict has killed 6,000 civilians this year and forced hundreds of thousands to abandon their homes and livelihoods.

Robow urged Hussein to quit and said his group’s intention was to rule Somalia by sharia law.

“When we force Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from our country, its traitors will follow and the people will be able to embrace an Islamic government,” he said.

The Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) had run widely despised warlords, who enjoyed U.S. backing, out of Mogadishu in June 2006 where many Somalis credited it with bringing a semblance of order to the capital.

But its attempts to enforce strict sharia law in the moderate Muslim country drew rumblings of discontent after they banned Bollywood films and khat, a mild narcotic leaf chewed throughout the Horn.

Somalia has been plagued by anarchy since warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. (Editing by Elizabeth Piper)


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