From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Tue Aug 18 2009 - 14:31:42 EDT
Somalia's prime minister reshuffles cabinet
Tue Aug 18, 2009 5:44pm GMT
* New foreign and defence ministers named
* PM splits finance portfolio into two positions
* U.N. starts relocating Somali refugees in Kenya
(Adds militia seizes town from al Shabaab)
By Abdiaziz Hassan NAIROBI, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Somali Prime Minister Omar
Abdirashid Sharmarke has reshuffled and expanded his cabinet in an attempt
to end in-fighting in the face of a long-drawn-out insurgency, officials
said on Tuesday.
Ali Jama Ahmed and Abdalla Boss Ahmed were named as foreign and defence
minister respectively, the same posts as they had held in the former
transitional federal government.
The finance portfolio was split in two, Abdirahman Omar Osman, former
protocol chief in President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's office, being named
treasury minister alongside Finance Minister Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden.
The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has been mired in civil war for 18
years, and the government controls only small pockets of the coastal capital
Mogadishu.
It is fighting groups including al Shabaab, which the United States says is
al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia, with the help of pro-government militia across
southern and central regions.
The Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca militia, fighting on the government's side, said it
had captured the central town of Wabho, a day after it wrested Bulahawa from
the militants.
"Our forces have taken control of Wabho after a brief fight with al
Shabaab," spokesman Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf said. "We shall
continue our operation to oust al Shabaab from the country."
One senior government official said Sharmarke seemed to have heeded demands
from the president's Abgal sub-clan for more influence. Abgal elders held
talks with Sharmarke in the Kenyan capital Nairobi last month. Foreign
Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar was transferred to the water and mineral
resources ministry, and Defence Minister Mohamed Abdi Ghandi became
transport minister.
The new jobs raised the number of cabinet posts to 39.
"BELOW EXPECTATIONS"
Western security agencies say Somalia has become a haven for Islamist
militants plotting attacks in the region and beyond. Violence has killed
more than 18,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven another 1
million from their homes.
Mogadishu-based analyst Abdirasaq Adan said the reshuffle would probably
change little. "The reshuffle we were waiting for was a kind of a fresh
start with new faces, but this one is repeating the same faces," he said.
"It has fallen below the expectations of the tribes, the local people and
the international donor community."
The U.N. refugee agency said it had begun moving some 12,900 Somali refugees
from the crowded Dadaab camps in northeast Kenya to Kakuma in the northwest.
Since January, more than 43,000 Somalis fleeing violence in their homeland
have sought refuge in the Dadaab camps, bringing the number of refugees
sheltered in the three camps to a record 289,500, a UNHCR spokesman said.
"The relocation of the refugees from Dadaab to Kakuma is part of a
multi-phase plan to alleviate the chronic overcrowding in the 18-year-old
Dadaab refugee camps, which host more than three times the population they
were initially designed to accommodate," spokesman Andrej Mahecic said.
Kenya has been reluctant to allocate more land to host refugees, who live in
congested makeshift huts. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in
Geneva and Abdi Guled in Mogadishu; writing by Daniel Wallis; editing by Tim
Pearce)
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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