Cabinet to be named, new gov't to plan relocation

Somalia’s new leaders are to reconstitute their country's cabinet this week and then decide when to relocate their new administration from Nairobi to Somalia, a Kenyan minister said on Tuesday.

"We met the Somali president [Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed] together with the prime minister [Ali Muhammad Gedi] and the speaker of the national assembly," John arap Koech, Kenya's minister for East Africa and Regional Cooperation, told a news conference in Nairobi. "They assured us that they will be appointing the cabinet this week.

"After the appointment of the cabinet, they are going to plan to relocate to Somalia," Koech added. "I am very hopeful that this time they are going to go to Somalia because they seem to have sorted out the problems that were giving a lot of dissatisfaction to the members of parliament."

The Somali transitional parliament approved Gedi's re-appointment as prime minister on 23 December, nearly two weeks after the assembly rejected his nomination on the grounds that his initial selection was made through unconstitutional means.

The parliament complained that President Yusuf had failed to submit his prime minister-designate to parliament for approval when he first appointed him.

Koech said that the Somali leaders had assured him that "when they have met as a cabinet and planned the relocation, they will announce, soon, the day when they are going to relocate to Somalia".

The new government earlier said it was unable to move from Nairobi to Mogadishu immediately because of security considerations.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki urged members of the Somali government to go back to Somalia during his New Year's message. He said they should not be discouraged by "small fights" inside their own country.

"They must return because we were making a government not to stay in Nairobi, but to return home and reconstruct that country," Kibaki said.

"It is difficult for the international community to assist the Somali government when they are still in Kenya," Koech said. "And the international community have assured us that as soon as the Somali people settle in Somalia, they will get assistance for their own country, which has been destroyed by 14 years of strife".

Koech further said Kenya had spent roughly US $10 million on the Somali peace process over the last two years. The figure did not include resources invested into the process by other governments in the region or funds from other international donors, who supported the reconciliation effort.

Somalia ceased to function as a modern state in 1991 following the overthrow of Mohammed Siyad Barre. Barre's ouster precipitated a ruinous civil war that saw numerous warlords and their militias divide the country into fiefdoms.

In October, members of the transitional federal parliament, sitting in Nairobi, elected Yusuf president at the end of a two-year reconciliation conference sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development. The conference brought together representatives from various clans and factions.