Another group of parliamentarians sworn in

Another group of members of Somalia's newly created parliament was sworn in at the weekend, bringing the number of MPs who have taken the oath of office to 258, officials said. Seventeen more are yet to be sworn in.

A first group of 206 MPs took the oath of office on 22 August.

Winston Tubman, the UN Secretary-General's Representative for Somalia, described the transitional federal parliament, which will have 275 members when at full strength, as a "solid new creation" that paves the way for the formation of a government in the war-torn Horn of Africa country.

Each of Somalia's four major clans was allocated 61 seats in the parliament, while an alliance of minority clans was awarded 31. A speaker and two deputy speakers to be elected from among the MPs will preside over the election of the president, who will in turn appoint a prime minister to form a government.

The parliamentarians sworn in on Sunday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, were mostly members of the Darod clan, one of the groups that had had difficulty selecting their representatives because of bickering among their delegates to the Somali reconciliation conference.

The MPs were chosen by elders and political leaders from their respective clans who have been attending the reconciliation conference, sponsored by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), in Nairobi for nearly two years ago now.

Somalia has been without an effective government since 1991, when the regime of Muhammad Siyad Barre was toppled.

IGAD groups Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. Somalia is also a member, but is not fully represented because it lacks a functioning government.