Monday, December 17, 2007
BAIDOA, Somalia - Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein dissolved Sunday his two-week-old cabinet, yielding to international pressure for a more broad-based government.
The move came as heavy fighting between the Ethiopia-backed government forces and Islamist-led insurgents again erupted in the capital Mogadishu. Bullets and shells ricocheted in the south of the city, which has been devastated by the fighting that has raged since the Islamists were ousted in January. Details on fatalities could not immediately be established. “I am planning to reorganise (a new) cabinet before I take it to parliament for approval. We shall decrease its size and 50 percent of the ministers will be appointed from outside parliament,” he said. “The international community expressed their displeasure with the number of ministers chosen from outside the parliament,” Hussein added. The 69-year-old prime minister — a former attorney general and head of Somalia’s Red Crescent society — named his 74-member cabinet on December 2. He appointed only two ministers from outside the 275-strong clan-based assembly, a move that did not please foreign donors. Five members quit the following day complaining they were not consulted. Last week, at least 19 civilians were killed in two days of some of the heaviest recent fighting in Mogadishu. The Ethiopian army said it had killed at least 75 Islamist fighters, but its claims could not be independently verified. The fighting has displaced an estimated 600,000 people from Mogadishu, many of whom are now huddled in squalid makeshift camps in the outskirts, spurring fears of Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis. UN chief Ban Ki-moon has ruled out the deployment of UN peacekeepers and the African states have balked at deploying more. Bloody clan conflict and power struggles that erupted after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre continue to defy all efforts to restore stability in Somalia. Source: AFP, Dec 17, 2007