Committee formed to oversee creation of parliament

Delegates attending the Somali peace talks in Kenya have nominated members to a committee that will oversee the setting up of a parliament for the strife-torn country. The parliament will in turn elect the president.

The committee would ensure that the process of selecting members of parliament was fair and serve as an arbitration forum to settle potential disputes over the distribution of seats, sources close to the talks told IRIN on Tuesday. It would also chair and coordinate the entire process of selecting MPs.

"Most of the clans have presented their nominees to the committee. They are taking the process seriously," said one of the sources.

Each of Somalia's four major clans had been allocated 61 seats in the proposed parliament, while a fifth clan (an alliance of minority clans) would have 31 MPs, bringing the total number of members of the country's proposed new parliament to 275.

A Speaker and two deputy Speakers would be elected from among the MPs. The Speaker and his deputies would then preside over the election of the president.

Somalia has been without a functioning government and torn apart by factional warfare since the toppling in 1991 of the regime of Muhammad Siyad Barre.

The talks, sponsored by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, began in October 2002 in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret, but were moved to Nairobi in February 2003. The talks have been dogged by wrangles over issues such as an interim charter, the number of participants and the selection of future parliamentarians.