Somalia names new cabinet
2006-08-21 11:50
Baidoa - Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Monday named a new 31-member cabinet, in a push to rejuvenate a government paralysed for nearly two years by infighting and now threatened by powerful Islamists.
It was not immediately clear whether Gedi included any
Islamists or Islamist allies in the new, streamlined cabinet.
President Abdullahi Yusuf on August 7 dissolved what he called
a bloated and ineffective cabinet, and ordered Gedi to name a
smaller one that would be reviewed on its performance in three
months. Gedi missed Yusuf's seven-day deadline by a week.
The announcement was made after Gedi consulted with Yusuf,
parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, parliamentarians and
traditional elders, a government spokesperson said.
"After the meetings the prime minister re-formed his
government," spokesperson Abdirahman Dinari told a news conference
in the government's temporary base, Baidoa.
Half of cabinet resigned
Gedi's reshuffle was part of a deal brokered by government
ally Ethiopia, after he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote
on July 30 and saw half his cabinet resign in frustration over
his reluctance to negotiate with the Islamists.
The Islamists' rise is the single biggest threat to the
interim government, formed at peace talks in Kenya in 2004 as a
14th stab at bringing central authority to a country in anarchy
since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The Islamists emerged in June as a new political and
military force after defeating US-backed warlords and seizing
control of Mogadishu and strategic areas around it.
Some parliamentarians wanted to bring the Islamists -
mostly from Gedi's Hawiye clan - into government through the
new cabinet.