Tuesday, December 16, 2008
By Mohamed Ahmed
The split at the top of the Western-backed government is blamed for
stalling a U.N.-hosted peace process and threatens to tear the weak
administration apart at a time Islamist insurgents are camped on the
outskirts of the capital Mogadishu.
Chronic instability in Somalia has uprooted about 1 million people,
a third of the population rely on emergency food aid and the chaos has
helped fuel kidnappings and piracy off the coast.
Analysts said the political standoff was only likely to deteriorate as there was a risk the feuding political camps could revive militias and take their battle back to the streets.
Yusuf said he was naming former interior minister Mohamed Mohamud Guled as prime minister because parliament had made the wrong decision on Monday by backing the man he sacked on Sunday.
Hussein ignored the move and held a meeting of his new cabinet in a hotel in Baidoa -- entrenching the split in the government by apparently running a parallel administration.
"What President Yusuf did today was ridiculous and astonishing. Nur Hassan is already the prime minister and the appointment of another prime minister is null and void," said lawmaker Ibrahim Yarrow Isak, who attended the cabinet meeting.
SANCTIONS THREATENED
The African Union and the European Union have urged the feuding government leaders to end their squabbles and focus on finding peace in the Horn of Africa nation.
Kenya, which hosted talks to form the transitional government, said on Tuesday it did not recognise the new prime minister and accused Yusuf of exacerbating Somalia's problems.
"If Somali leaders continue to jeopardise the peace process Kenya will impose sanctions," Kenyan Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetang'ula told a news conference.
He said Kenya and the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional body spearheading the peace process, were gathering data on when to impose sanctions such as cancelling visas, freezing assets and restricting travel.
Analysts said the African Union needed to take a stronger stance as IGAD did not have clear mechanisms to force the government to get its act together, and sanctions were unlikely to work.
"The AU should come in heavily on the Somalia leadership and IGAD," Patrick Mutahi, an analyst at the Africa Policy Institute, told Reuters.
"Things are going to get worse, there will be more chaos because each side has their own militia which can be reconstituted and lead to more chaos," he said.
The government is propped up by Ethiopian troops and 3,200 African Union peacekeepers protecting strategic sites, but it only controls Mogadishu and the seat of parliament, Baidoa.
The African Union has failed to boost its force to an expected 8,000 troops and Ethiopia plans to pull its soldiers out by the end of the year, fuelling fears of a power vacuum which could allow the Islamists to seize the Somali capital.
Hussein's falling out with Yusuf began when he fired Mogadishu's
mayor, a key ally of the president. The two also differ on the
direction of U.N.-hosted talks that aim to get the government to share
power with the moderate Islamist opposition.
SOURCE: Reuters, Tuesday, December 16, 2008