President dissolves cabinet

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the President of the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), on Monday announced the dissolution of the country's cabinet. "The President has dissolved the cabinet and has asked [the] Prime Minister [Ali Muhammad Gedi] to come up with a new one in one week," Abdirahman Dinari, the government spokesman, told IRIN. The announcement comes a day after three top officials of the TFG agreed to resolve their differences and reshuffle the cabinet. Dinari said the leaders had also agreed to reduce the cabinet from 42 to 31 ministers. "This will be a much leaner and a more efficient cabinet," he said. The president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden agreed on Saturday to reconcile following a meeting in Baidoa with a 20-member delegation of senior Ethiopian officials, led by Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin. But a power struggle between them could still erupt, thwarting efforts to establish the fragile government across the country, according to a member of parliament and civil society representatives. "This was a power struggle between the president and the prime minister and it is far from resolved, despite the announcement," an MP, who declined to be named, told IRIN in Baidoa, the temporary seat of the transitional government. A civil society representative in the capital, Mogadishu, said he hoped the agreement would herald a new and more unified transitional government. "I hope this means they will move quickly in re-establishing dialogue with the Islamic courts," he said. "The suffering of the Somali people will hopefully take centre-stage, instead of petty rivalries." The leadership of Somalia's Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs) has been divided, with Gedi on one side and Yusuf and Aden on the other, over talks with the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controls Mogadishu and much of the south. The TFG and the UIC met on 22 June in the Sudanese capital Khartoum and agreed to meet again on 15 July. The TFG had, however, refused to attend the July meeting, accusing the UIC of violating the earlier agreement. Gedi survived a no-confidence vote on 30 July brought by MPs apparently angered by his refusal to send a team to Khartoum. This was followed by the resignations of at least 40 ministers and assistant ministers, who said they were leaving because Gedi was obstructing the reconciliation process in the country by delaying talks between the Union of Islamic Courts and the government. The MP in Baidao told IRIN he feared the leaders had glossed over their differences. He said the resignations and the call to meet the UIC were just a cover. Dinari, however, said that "whatever misunderstanding existed between them has been resolved. The aim now is to put all efforts into serving the people." ah/mw