Fists fly in Somali assembly over vote

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Fists fly in Somali assembly over vote
Armoured personal carriers are parked

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By Guled Mohamed

BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - Some Somali lawmakers threw punches and wrestled on the floor after Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi survived a crucial confidence vote that could have led to the collapse of his government.

Armed police entered parliament to separate four brawling members of parliament and escort Gedi out during several minutes of chaos after he survived the censure motion, witnesses said.

Gedi won 88 votes to his opponents' 126 -- short of the two-thirds majority they needed to censure him in an old grain store converted into Somalia's temporary parliament.

Defeat would have sparked the dissolution of the interim government's executive, already in some disarray over the threat from an Islamist movement that has taken the capital, Mogadishu, and a large part of southern Somalia.

"Whatever we were accused of we will try to rectify," Gedi told about 200 supporters who celebrated later outside his home.

"I thank those who brought the motion because they proved that we have democracy," he added in a conciliatory tone.

The anti-Gedi faction had argued his performance was incompetent and his removal necessary to create a post for Mogadishu's new Islamist rulers to come into government.

However, the Islamists' top leader said machinations within government did not affect their position of refusing talks until pro-government Ethiopian troops leave Somali soil.

"We don't care whether it's a single soldier or a whole battalion ... as long as they are in our country, we will not attend," Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told Reuters of efforts to get both sides to a negotiating table in Sudan.

TRADITIONAL ENEMY

The Islamists took Mogadishu and other southern towns last month from U.S.-backed warlords, denting the Western-backed government's aspiration to restore central rule to Somalia for the first time since the 1991 overthrow of a dictator.

Based in the provincial town of Baidoa, a former agricultural and trading town set in flat bushlands, the internationally-recognised but effectively powerless government was set up in 2004 to try to end anarchy in Somalia.

Some anti-Gedi members of parliament and cabinet members are also angry at him for the government's controversial ties to Ethiopia -- Somalia's traditional enemy -- which is believed to have sent hundreds of soldiers over the border.

President Abdullahi Yusuf has long been close to Ethiopia, and Gedi is accused by some of "selling out" to Addis Ababa too.

Sunday's brief brawl was not the first time Somali legislators had turned violent on the job: a 2005 parliamentary session at a Nairobi hotel degenerated into chair-throwing.

As he comes from the same clan as many of the Islamists -- and thus occupies the position agreed to be given to that clan in the interim government -- Gedi's position had long been seen as the one most likely to attract them into government.

The Islamists, however, have not said if they even want power-sharing. And some fear they seek a complete takeover by military means to create an Islamic state based on sharia law.

Surviving the censure gives Gedi a much-needed boost.

His executive began unravelling last week with the resignation of 18 ministers and assistant ministers, who said they were stepping aside to promote the Sudan peace talks.

Then gunmen shot dead a cabinet minister outside a mosque on Friday, which sparked riots and ratcheted up tension in Baidoa.

In a separate development, the first conventional passenger plane in 15 years landed at Mogadishu's recently reopened international airport on Sunday, residents said.

Reuters (IDS)