Somali Parliament Endorses New Prime Minister

In Mogadishu, several hundred people held a rally in favour of the new prime minister.

Somalia's parliament endorsed on Saturday the appointment of the Western-educated son of a slain former president as prime minister in a unity government tasked with restoring order to the failed Horn of Africa state.

After a 414-to-9 vote in his favour, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, 48, took the oath of office at a session of the legislature in neighbouring Djibouti.

"I will form a government of national unity that will give top priority to peace and security," he told parliament. "The nation and the people are waiting for us."

Sharmarke and President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a moderate Islamist leader who chose Sharmarke to try to broaden the appeal of his government at home and abroad, face the herculean task of bringing peace to Somalia for the first time in 18 years.

Armed Islamist insurgents have declared jihad against the new power-sharing government, formed in a U.N.-brokered peace process in Djibouti. Some 1 million people live as internal refugees around the shattered nation.

In Mogadishu, several hundred people held a rally in favour of the new prime minister. But in the regional town of Beled Hawo, a women's group demonstrated, saying women, plus smaller clans, had been ignored in the creation of the new government.

Yet the appointments of Ahmed, the former leader of a sharia courts movement, and Sharmarke, a former U.N. employee and member of Somalia's large diaspora, have provided a new political dynamic that is giving some cause for hope.

"I am more optimistic about the future of Somalia than I have been in a number of years," Professor David Shinn, an Africa expert at George Washington University, told Reuters.

"The selection of a PM from the large Darod clan is a wise choice to balance President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's Hawiye clan connection," he said, adding that Sharmarke's distinguished family and diaspora connections would also be advantages.

"I think this selection increases the possibility that the Sheikh Sharif government will be able to pull Somalia out of its downward spiral and eventually even create an administration that is broadly accepted by Somalis."

The leading Islamist insurgent group al Shabaab, however, is determined to stop that. It has attacked both the government and African Union (AU) peacekeepers in recent days and held anti-government protests in areas of south Somalia it controls.

INTERNATIONAL TIES

An al Qaeda leader, too, urged Somali militants to step up jihad against the government in a video released on Friday. Washington believes al Shabaab is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia, and the group is known to have foreign fighters in its ranks.

The government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu, whereas Islamist insurgents control other parts of the city and large swathes of the south.

Somalia descended into anarchy and civil conflict when warlords kicked out dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, and this is the 15th attempt to set up a government since then.

"I hope the parliament, president and prime minister will work together as a team to save the nation," president Sharif told parliament on Saturday.

His new prime minister is the son of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, an elected president shot dead in 1969 before the military coup that brought Barre into power.

Though his family base is in Virginia in the United States, he has both Canadian and Somali citizenship, his aides said.

The president of semi-autonomous Puntland province, where Sharmarke is from, was happy with the appointment.

"We are welcoming the new government of Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid and we will work with it. We hope that he will bring to an end the protracted violence in Somalia," Abdirahman Farole told reporters.

"His family has a good history in Somalia, his father was a good president and we hope that he will be similar to his late father."

In next-door Ethiopia, which has just pulled its military out of Somalia after a two-year intervention, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his troops would cross the border again if necessary, to counter Islamist militants, but was not considering another major incursion.

"We reserve our right of hot pursuit but have no intention of going back to Somalia and trying to restabilise the country," he said late on Friday.