Sunday, November 16, 2008
Hussein said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed -- a former warlord in the breakaway region of Puntland -- had refused to approve a new cabinet list seen as a key step in ending nearly two decades of bloodletting.
"The Somali president is responsible for the failure of the transitional federal government to achieve its goal of forming a new cabinet," he told reporters in Nairobi.
"I presented the list of ministers and assistant ministers to the president, but he rejected it," Hussein added.
"It is unfortunate that the president has become the first to oppose the IGAD directives though he was one of the signatories."
At a summit in October in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), set a deadline of November 12 for the feuding sides to agree a new transitional government.
Hussein and Yusuf met in Ethiopia last week, but failed to agree how to implement the Nairobi declaration, which includes naming a new cabinet.
According to the timelines agreed at Nairobi, this should have been finalised on Wednesday last week.
Leaders of IGAD, which includes Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, will now have to meet to decide the way forward for Somalia.
Ethiopia, which currently chairs IGAD, has troops in Somalia supporting the struggling government there against Islamist insurgents, who are increasingly gaining ground.
Hussein vowed to ignore the president and present the cabinet list to parliament for approval in order to get his government going.
As tension between the two leaders mounted, Yusuf flew to Libya for talks with Moamer Kadhafi, but it was unclear if the president is shifting to Arab mediation instead of regional countries to help stabilise Somalia.
"The president needs moral and material support from Kadhafi as his country is in a critical condition," an official told AFP.
Hussein also accused Yusuf of refusing to support a recent power-sharing and truce agreement between the government and the opposition, the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), at UN-mediated talks in Djibouti.
"I am sorry to say that the president never supported the Djibouti peace process aimed at uniting the government and the Islamist," said Hussein, who supports the deal.
"I am the prime minister of Somalia who has great respect for the president, but I am not interested in his personal dictates that are against the rule of law."
Regional leaders say in-fighting in the Somali government and an unrelenting Islamist insurgency in Mogadishu has stalled government and parliamentary operations, choking efforts to restore stability in the country.
A similar power struggle forced Ali Mohamed Gedi to resign as prime minister last year. He accused the president of interfering with the government's operations.
Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.
Source: AFP, Nov 16, 2008