Somali parliament votes out dissident speaker
Source: Reuters
(updates with U.S. criticising Somali government) By Hassan Yare BAIDOA, Somalia, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Somalia's parliament on Wednesday ousted Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who for two years opposed the president and prime minister and infuriated them late last year with peace overtures to Islamist rivals. "The speaker is out," Somali legislator Ali Basha told Reuters by phone from the parliament in a converted grain warehouse in the provincial town of Baidoa. He said 183 voted against Adan, while eight voted in his favour and one abstained. Adan's ouster, in the making for weeks, was seen by analysts and diplomats as a move by President Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi to consolidate power and exact revenge on their political bete noire for the last two years. Adan, speaking from Rome, rejected his impeachment. "It is an absolutely illegitimate act because as long as Ethiopia occupies Somalia our parliament will be deprived of its rights and will not be able to operate freely," the Misna missionary news agency quoted Adan as saying. The government's hand has been strengthened since its troops, backed by Ethiopian airpower and armour, drove Islamists from Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia before the New Year. Yusuf's administration has rebuffed appeals by many, including the United States, to sit down wtih Adan to ensure peace and stability in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, urged the government not to dwell on the past. "The point about the speaker is that what happened in the past should be very different from what happens going forward. And the going forward requires one thing, it requires reconciliation," Frazer said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Michael Ranneberger, the U.S. ambassador for Kenya and responsible for Somalia, said everyone in Somalia who renounces violence should be included in reconciliation. "The speaker as far as I know is a respected figure in Somalia and the kind of person who could pull people together," he told reporters in Nairobi. Legislator Mohamed Isak Fanah, who opposed the motion, said it would foster conflict. "What happened in the parliament today is a new problem for Somalia. Somalia needs a reconciliation process," he said. PEACEKEEPERS WANTED The speaker, who had close ties to the Mogadishu businessmen who financed the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC), made several attempts to strike peace deals between the government and the Islamist movement when it controlled most of the south. But his manoeuvres -- seen by many diplomats as a good chance to bring in moderate Islamists -- incurred the wrath of Yusuf and Gedi, who said the power-sharing deal he cut had no government authority. Adan's overtures preceded the late December offensive against the Islamists. Ibrahim Adan Hassan, one of 31 members of parliament (MPs) who proposed the no-confidence vote, blamed Adan for rifts in the government since its birth at peace talks in Kenya in 2004. "The speaker was at the head of the conflict in parliament for the last two years," Hassan said of Adan, who has not been in the legislature since September. Officials said a new speaker would be appointed in 15 days. Yusuf and Gedi are trying to bring the volatile nation of 10 million to heel after the routing of the Islamists, who have fled to the south near Kenya. Police in Kenya are checking rumours some top Islamists want to surrender at the border, but police and security sources downplayed that. The Somali government wants an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force -- approved by the U.N. Security Council before the war -- in Somalia by February. Ethiopia wants to pull out its soldiers in weeks. Most analysts believe it will take far longer to organise and finance the AU mission. South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told reporters in Pretoria that logistics involved made the timeline unrealistic for African nations. Even if an African force does move into Somalia, it faces a huge task in keeping peace in a nation in anarchy since the 1991 ouster of a dictator and which defied the best efforts of U.S. and U.N. peacekeepers in the early 1990s. (Additional reporting by Bryson Hull, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi, Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa, Sarah McGregor in Pretoria and Silvia Aloisi in Rome)
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