Somali leader still in hospital; Islamist rejects talk

(Adds radios, details)
By Guled Mohamed

NAIROBI, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf spent a second day in hospital on Wednesday with what government sources called a minor chest problem but others described as very serious.

In a tumultuous week for Somali politics, an exiled Islamist leader rejected a call by Somalia's new prime minister for talks to try to stem a year-long insurgency that has killed some 6,000 civilians.

And the prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, was considering his next move after the resignation of five ministers from a cabinet he named only on Sunday -- the latest blow to efforts to unify a government paralysed by years of infighting.

At Nairobi Hospital, Somali Ambassador to Kenya Mohamed Ali Nur said the president -- who gives his age as 72 but is said by some to be nearer 80 -- was having a "routine check-up" before seeing doctors in London where he had a liver transplant.

"We don't like the allegations (that his condition is worse)," he said. "I can tell you that he is OK, he was actually exercising."

Two sources close to the president said Yusuf had a chest complaint that was being treated prior to the stress of intercontinental travel.

Having lived with a transplanted liver for nearly 13 years, Yusuf routinely flies abroad for check-ups and what might be a normal malady in others his age must be closely watched.
But a diplomat tracking Somalia said officials were hiding the truth after Yusuf was flown into Nairobi on Tuesday.

"He is very, very bad. His stomach is inflated 10 centimetres and he is permanently on an oxygen mask," he said, citing conversations with Somali officials on Wednesday.
If anything were to happen to Yusuf, Somali parliamentary speaker Sheikh Adan Madobe would take over for 30 days while a successor was found, according to the government's charter.

U.S WANTS "BROAD" GOVERNMENT

In Eritrea, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the opposition Alliance For the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) and considered a relative moderate among the Islamist movement, scoffed at the new prime minister's call for dialogue.

"Our problem is not with the old prime minister or the new prime minister. Our problem is Ethiopia's occupation," he said.

Ahmed's Islamist courts' movement ruled Mogadishu for six months last year, until it was routed by Ethiopia's army backing forces from the interim Somali government.
Hardline Islamists have led an insurgency against the government and Ethiopian troops throughout 2007.

U.N. officials say the humanitarian situation is Africa's most extreme, with red tape and restrictions hampering aid to the one million people uprooted by the fighting.
But restrictions on U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) aid to the Lower Shabelle region were lifted on Wednesday, a day after the Somali government blocked two shiploads of food to the area.

Regional governor Abdulqadir Sheikh Mohamed said the government security agency had reached an agreement with WFP.

A WFP official in Nairobi confirmed the ban was lifted.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a brief trip to sub-Saharan Africa, was due to meet Hussein in Ethiopia, with a message for the prime minister to promote inclusive government.
"It's got to be broad," she said. "The extremists are going to have to be set aside. The problem is not to call everyone extremists who are in the opposition."

PIRATE SIEGE

In Mogadishu, three independent radio stations closed by the government said they had been allowed to re-open after negotiating conditions for reporting with Mogadishu's mayor.
"After we compromised with the mayor on conditions presented to us last month, we were permitted to reopen our radios again," Muqtar Mohamed Hirabe, acting director of Shabelle radio, told Reuters. Radio Banadir and Radio Simba also re-opened.
It was unclear how the mayor's strict rules, including not reporting on the opposition, had been modified.

And in the northern Somali port of Bosasso, negotiations between pirates who seized a tanker full of benzene 43 days ago and the ship's owners were under way, said the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

U.S. Navy and allied ships had cornered the ship on Tuesday.
"The ship has not yet been released. The U.S. coalition is not involved in the discussions, but is monitoring the situation," Navy spokeswoman Denise Garcia said.

The German military on Tuesday said that its ship was not involved, contrary to reports from local officials on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Aweys Yusuf in Mogadishu, Guled Mohamed, Bryson Hull and Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi, Sue Pleming in Addis Ababa, Jack Kimball in Asmara, Mohammed Abbas and Louis Charbonneau in Berlin; Editing by Bryson Hull and Mary Gabriel)

Source: Reuters