| Africa Horn | ||
| Somalia ex-Defence Minister killed in Mogadishu blast | ||
| 2016-02-17 | ||
 MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Former Somali Defence Minister Mohiyadin Mohamed Haji has been confirmed dead in a blast inside his car near Mogadishu’s KM4 junction on Monday, Garowe Online reports.Witnesses and police say, the bomb would have been attached beneath his seat
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| Africa Horn | |
| President Sheikh Sharif in Mog for coalition talks | |
| 2009-02-08 | |
 Oooh! New hat and everything! Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed arrived Saturday in Mogadishu--his first trip there since being elected last week--to hold talks aimed at forming a broad coalition government. "My trip to Mogadishu is aimed at having consultations with elders, politicians and Islamic resistance groups," he told reporters upon arriving in the Somali capital. The young cleric and former opposition leader was elected as Somali's new president on Jan. 31 by lawmakers gathered in Djibouti. Sheikh Sharif had travelled to Addis Ababa this week to take part in the African Union summit and then returned to Djibouti. The newly-elected leader had said he would form an inclusive government and extend a hand to armed groups still opposed to the U.N.-sponsored reconciliation effort which saw him leave his exile in Eritrea. Hawiye clan Several politicians are vying to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein. According to Somalia's transitional charter, the president, the premier and the parliament speaker have to come from three different major clans.
The new president, in his mid-forties, was one of the main targets when Ethiopian troops invaded in late 2006 to remove what they saw as an extremist Islamic movement on their doorstep. But after two years of deadly guerrilla war, the Ethiopians have pulled out with little progress to speak of, more radical groups have blossomed and Sheikh Sharif is seen by many as occupying the political centre. Sheikh Sharif will face the daunting task of taming Shebab fighters, who control several key towns, and overcoming clan divisions within his future administration. | |
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| Africa Horn |
| Sheikh Sharif elected as Somalia's president |
| 2009-02-01 |
 Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed on Saturday was elected Somalia's president, leaving him in charge of a fragile peace process aimed at ending 18 years of civil conflict. The young Imam promptly vowed to form a broad government and invited all armed groups in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation to join the U.N.-sponsored reconciliation effort. "Extending a hand" Sheikh Sharif, who chairs the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), comfortably won the vote held in neighboring Djibouti, only days after the Ethiopian troops who sent him into exile two years ago completed their pullout from Somalia. He defeated Maslah Mohamed Siad Barre, a general and the son of a former president, in the second round of voting, according to an official tally of some 430 lawmakers' votes. "We have 293 votes for Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and 126 for Siad," said Hussein Mohamed Jama, head of the presidential electoral commission. "I declare Sharif Sheikh Ahmed the president of Somalia after winning this election," Parliament Speaker Aden Mohamed Nur said. In a brief acceptance speech following a vote that ended after 4:00 a.m. (0100 GMT), Sheikh Sharif vowed to reach out to the former transitional government as well as to the Shebab, a hardline offshoot of the ICU which rejects talks. "Very soon, I will form a government which represents the people of Somalia. We will live peacefully with East African countries and we want to cooperate with them," he said. "I am extending a hand to all Somali armed groups who are still opposed to this process and inviting them to join us," he added. Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, long seen as the young cleric's main rival to take the helm of the war-ravaged country, pulled out of the contest after trailing Sheikh Sharif by a massive 160 votes in the first round. "I am ready to cooperate with whoever is elected to make Somalia a peaceful country," he then said. The vote by a parliament enlarged earlier this week to include Sheikh Sharif's moderate wing of the Islamist-led opposition started late Friday, after hours of intense discussions between MPs. Sheikh Sharif, a former geography teacher educated in Sudan and Libya, ran in the election as the head of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), an Islamist-dominated opposition umbrella formed in 2007. |
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| Africa Horn |
| UN envoy welcomes expansion of Somali Parliament |
| 2009-01-27 |
| (Xinhua) -- UN Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah on Monday welcomed the overwhelming vote by Somalia's Transitional Federal Parliament in favour of expanding the legislative body by an additional 275 Members. "I am extremely encouraged by this vote and I would like to thank Somalia's leaders, the Parliamentarians and all those who have helped work towards such a positive step," Ould-Abdallah saidin a statement issued in Nairobi. The Parliamentary vote, which took place in Djibouti on Monday, resulted in 211 MPs voting in favour of expansion with six against and three abstentions. The Somali Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia agreed last October on the outline of enlarging Somalia's Transitional Federal Parliament and forming a Government of National Unity. Up to 200 new members of Parliament, selected by the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) are expected to be sworn in Djibouti while the expanded Parliament will subsequently elect a new president. The other 75 seats are being kept for members of civil society and opposition who are not members of the ARS. "This is a very good result and will demonstrate to the Somali people that their leaders are committed to moving forward together to restore peace and stability," said Ould-Abdallah. The international community hopes a more inclusive Somali government will be able to reach out to armed groups who are still fighting the interim government and targeting African Union peacekeepers in the capital Mogadishu. "It means Somalia will have a new President who will be able to attend the African Union Summit of Heads of State in Addis Ababa on Feb. 1, demonstrating the progress that was made here in a short space of time." "The international community has also made a key contribution with support for the Parliamentary meetings and, as always, Djibouti has provided most welcome hospitality and backing," said the UN special representative. ARS leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed announced on Sunday he would contest the presidential election. Sharif and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein are seen as the two main presidential contenders. More than a dozen candidates are expected to vie to succeed former President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed who stepped down last month after falling out with the prime minister over a UN-backed peace deal. The lawmakers are also mulling whether to extend by some 10 days over Wednesday's deadline for choosing a new president, to allow contenders time to campaign. But Ould-Abdallah had earlier urged the parliament to respect its Jan. 28 deadline for selecting Yusuf's successor. Under the constitutional charter, a new Somali president, who in turn will appoint a new prime minister, should be chosen by parliament within 30 days of the resignation of the last one. |
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| Arabia |
| Yemen grants asylum to Somali ex-president |
| 2009-01-22 |
| Ex-Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed will be staying in Yemen, the country which granted him political asylum after he resigned in late December because of a row with his prime minister, a Yemeni presidency source said on Wednesday. "The president of Yemen granted Somalia's president the right of political asylum last night," the source told AFP. The ex-head of state has been given a permanent home in Yemen, which faces Somalia on the other side of the horn of Africa. Yusuf stepped down on Dec. 29 after having tried and failed to sack Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein. The president's bid to push Hussein out of his job was thwarted when parliament backed the prime minister with a massive vote of confidence. Yusuf clashed with Hussein over their approach to the opposition. During his time as president, Yusuf had poor relations with the opposition, who accused him of obstructing the peace process. |
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| Africa Horn |
| Resignations on the rise in Somalia |
| 2009-01-03 |
| A top Somali government official resigns after his colleague is gunned down, while three others resign citing corruption in the government. Sheikh Hassan Gaab member of the government of interim Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein resigned after he called a press conference in the city of Baidoa following the assassination of his colleague Abdullahi Abdi Egal in broad daylight also in Baidoa. Gaab accused the government's mishandling of the situation where lawmakers are being killed every day by unknown groups, a Press TV correspondent quoting Gaab reported from Mogadishu. He added that no one is arresting the killers who roam in the streets freely after every incident. The incidents are not being investigated by the Somali government either, "so we die for nothing", our correspondent quoted him as saying. Gaab said that lawmakers, fearing for their lives, are fleeing the city, blaming the Baidoa clan militia for the killings. In another development, three Baidoa government officials have resigned from their posts accusing senior officials of misusing taxes collected from local people. They said that the Bay regional government has not made any progress since it was established. The previous day, the Bay region's secretary for justice and religious affairs, Sheikh Abukar Sheikh Abdullahi, resigned from his post after raising similar concerns of corruption. Baidoa is the capital of the Bay region and the seat of Somalia's federal parliament since 2006. |
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| Africa Horn |
| Somalia's caretaker president says new leader to be named soon |
| 2009-01-02 |
| (Xinhua) -- Somalia's caretaker President Sheik Aden Madoobe, who is also the speaker of parliament, on Thursday pledged to organize the selection of a president within the thirty-day deadline set by the transitional federal charter. Madoobe, who took over the presidency after Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed resigned as president on Monday, spoke in the Parliament in the southern town of Baidoa for the first time as the country's caretaker President, telling lawmakers that a committee will be set up to organize the selection of a new president "as soon as possible". "I will work to uphold the national charter and we will form a committee to organize the selection of the president within the thirty-day duration stipulated by our charter," Madoobe told lawmakers. Former President Yusuf resigned to culminate worsening political disagreement with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein after international pressure on him mounted. Madoobe in his address to the parliament appealed to the United Nations to send peacekeepers to Somalia to replace Ethiopian troops who will withdraw from the country within the first week of January. A UN-sponsored power sharing agreement between the Somali transitional government and a key opposition faction stipulates the expansion of the current parliament to include opposition members and the election of new leadership for the war-torn Horn of Africa country early this year. The caretaker President, who also chaired the parliament session, urged parliamentarians who were absent from Baidoa, the seat of the legislature body, to return to the town within seven days "in order to participate in the selection of a president for the country". According to the transitional federal charter, two-thirds of the parliament members is required for the election of a president. He warned the lawmakers who were not in attendance that "they will face replacement if they failed to return", saying they should tend their resignation if they are not ready to serve their country so that a replacement will be nominated by their clans. Somali parliamentarians have been nominated by their respective clan elders and factional leaders during the formation of the current legislative assembly in the 2004 national reconciliation conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Several lawmakers are currently outside the country while others have left for other areas in Somalia, including nearly twenty-five pro-Yusuf members of parliament who flew to Galkacyo aday before Yusuf resigned, citing "insecurity and harassment" for their departure. Madoobe promised that security will be strengthened in Baidoa where a lawmaker was killed by unknown gunmen as attacks on Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies have recently been steadily increasing. |
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| Africa Horn |
| Somalia President to resign |
| 2008-12-25 |
| Political turmoil is deepening in Somalia as President Abdullahi Yusuf decides to step down and is to announce his resignation on Saturday. "The president has already written his resignation letter and he is expected to announce it on the coming Saturday," Hussein Mohamed Mohamud, a presidential spokesman, told Reuters, declining to give a reason for the decision. The African Union has hailed the decision as a positive move for the peace process in the Horn of Africa nation. Yusuf has been accused by donor countries and regional governments of being an obstacle to UN-hosted peace talks. "The move is a dignified move on the part of the president. If his decision is to resign, I would congratulate him," said Nicolas Bwakira, the African Union Commission's Special Representative for Somalia. The announcement made by Yusuf's spokesman on Wednesday, came shortly after the resignation of Prime Minister Mohamed Mohamoud Guled. Yusuf sacked former Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein earlier this month and appointed Guled instead. The appointment had been promptly rejected by Parliament and the international community who backed Hussein. Saying he did not want to be an obstacle to peace in Somalia, Guled resigned eight days after the appointment. |
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| Africa Horn |
| Somali president says he's not obstacle to peace |
| 2008-12-18 |
 Somalia's president on Wednesday defended his efforts to fire the country's prime minister after being sharply criticized by the U.S. and Kenya, while lawmakers said they would seek to impeach the president.Kenya's foreign affairs minister on Tuesday called Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf an obstacle to peace and announced sanctions against him, including a travel ban and freezing any assets in Kenya. The U.S. State Department also criticized Yusuf, with deputy spokesman Robert Wood describing the prime minister's removal as undermining "efforts to promote peace and stability in the region." "It cannot be true that I'm an obstacle to peace. It is propaganda," Yusuf said in a rare telephone interview with The Associated Press from the southern Somalia town of Baidoa, where parliament sits. Yusuf unilaterally fired Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein this week after months of public feuds over the best way to bring peace in Somalia, but parliament soundly rejected Yusuf's decision and voted to keep the prime minister. The president said Wednesday that parliament's vote was illegal and that he had a right to appoint a new prime minister. But lawmaker Ibrahim Isaq Yarow said that a resolution to impeach Yusuf had the support of 117 legislators in the 275-member parliament. The resolution alleges Yusuf has violated 14 articles of Somalia's transitional charter, including illegally printing money and committing unspecified injustices. No date has been set for a vote. Yusuf called the impeachment attempt "illegal and an affront to the law of the land." He said he could not be impeached before Somalia's attorney general investigated the allegations. The government dispute does nothing to stabilize the administration, which wields virtually no authority in the face of powerful Islamic insurgents who have taken over most of the Horn of Africa country. Ethiopia, which has been protecting the Somali government, recently announced it would withdraw its troops by the end of this month. That will leave the government vulnerable to Islamic insurgents, who began a brutal insurgency in 2007. Civilians have suffered most from the violence surrounding the insurgency, with thousands killed or maimed by mortar shells, machine-gun crossfire and grenades. The United Nations says there are 300,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia, but attacks and kidnappings of aid workers have shut down many humanitarian projects. The lawlessness allows piracy to flourish off the coast; bandits have taken in about $30 million in ransom this year. The United States worries that Somalia could be a terrorist breeding ground, and accuses the most powerful Islamic faction, al-Shabab, of harboring the al-Qaida-linked terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The Bush administration is pushing for U.N. peacekeepers to be sent to help stabilize Somalia, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that he had talked to at least 50 nations over the past four months about such a force and seen almost no support for the idea. "Not one nation has volunteered to lead," Ban said. "The replies have been very lukewarm or negative. ... There are one or two who have expressed their willingness to provide some troops." |
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| Africa Horn |
| Somalia: Parliament votes for government |
| 2008-12-17 |
| (SomaliNet) A majority of MPs in the Somalian parliament has voted in support of the government. The vote was called by Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, who opposed President Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed's decision to dismiss the cabinet. The Somalian president wanted to dismiss the government because he says it has failed to make Somalia safe. But the prime minister said the president cannot send the government home without consulting parliament. Somalia has been involved in a long-running conflict with Islamist militias, who have control of part of the country. The African Union has urged President Yusuf and Prime Minister Hussein to restore peace in Somalia. |
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| Africa Horn |
| Somali MPs back prime minister briefly dismissed by president |
| 2008-12-16 |
 Somalia's interim Parliament on Monday overwhelming backed the government of Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, a day after the war-wracked country's president announced his dismissal. Speaker Aden Mohammad Nur said after counting the votes during a special Parliament session in the town of Baidoa that "143 MPs recognized the existence of the government, 20 rejected it and 7 abstained. "Therefore the government of Nur Adde [Hassan Hussein] is legitimate," he said. On Sunday, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad announced that he was sacking the prime minister and the entire Cabinet because they had failed to bring security to the war-torn nation, but the premier challenged the move as unconstitutional. According to the transitional federal charter, the president needs Parliament's approval to sack the prime minister. Speaking to Parliament before the vote, Hussein said: "It was difficult to work with the president, who disapproved of the peace process." "The president was interfering with the activities of the prime minister and Parliament," he said. "It's up to Parliament to make a decision in order to save the transitional federal institutions and the rule of law." Yusuf had said Monday he would comply with Parliament's decision and gave no hint he would resign. |
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| Africa Horn |
| Somali government near collapse |
| 2008-11-16 |
| Speaking to the MPs at the Kenyan capital, Somalian President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed says that government is on the verge of being demolished by insurgency. On Saturday, Abdullahi Yusuf urged Somali MPs in Nairobi to return to the country immediately to build a new government. The president confessed that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) controls small parts of Mogadishu and Baidoa and the two areas are under persistent attacks from the insurgents. Yusuf refused to agree to a cabinet list submitted by Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein earlier and accused the premier of dissolving the cabinet and appointing ministers that don't care about the country. "You know Elasha Biyaha (outside Mogadishu) that close to Mogadishu was captured, Yusuf further added. Analysts say that the two leaders are competing to dominate the parliament. |
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