Somali president flown to Kenya hospital amid walkout

By Ahmed Mohamed
BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Turmoil struck the Somali government on Tuesday as a fifth minister resigned in a power-sharing dispute a day after being appointed, and the president was urgently flown to a hospital in Kenya's capital.

A security official described President Abdullahi Yusuf, 72, as being in a "serious condition" when he arrived in Nairobi from neighbouring Somalia on Tuesday.

But the government and diplomats played down the threat to his health.

"He is not as serious as we thought. He was not carried by an ambulance. He went in his Mercedes to the hospital," Ali Mohamed Sheikh, chief of protocol at the Somali embassy to Kenya, told Reuters.

Yusuf is a long-surviving liver transplant patient and for years has flown abroad for specialised treatment. He had been due to go to London for a checkup this week.

Government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon said: "I guess he is just tired because he had a long meeting with the prime minister last night, but he is not in a serious condition."

Five ministers have quit the cabinet of new Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, striking a blow to his plans to unify a government paralysed by infighting for nearly three years.

Deputy minister for religious affairs, Sheikh Jama Haji Hussein, said he resigned after talking to elders and politicians from his Jarerweyne sub-clan, a part of the Fifth clan -- a catch-all grouping of Somalia's smallest clans.

"The clan that I hail from has always been discriminated (against) and has never been given its fair posts in any government formed in Somalia from the day the country gained independence," he told reporters in the southern town of Baidoa where parliament sits.

CLAN CLASHES

Hussein's government is the 14th attempt at establishing effective central rule since clan warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The clan issue -- paramount in Somali life and politics -- has beset the interim government since it was formed at peace talks in Kenya three years ago.

Four ministers from the Rahanwein clan -- one of the big four clans -- quit late on Monday, including National Security Minister Hassan Mohamed Nur Shatigadud.

"We decided to resign because we, as Rahanwein, have been scorned and we have not been given our fair share in Nur Adde's new government," Shatigadud told a news conference, referring to the premier by his nickname Nur Adde.

The squabbling highlights the difficulty of Hussein's task to unite the lawless Horn of Africa country whose 10 million citizens are more likely to pledge allegiance to their clan than a national government.

Hussein's inauguration last month was seen as an opportunity for reconciliation in Somalia where fighting between government troops and Islamist insurgents has killed almost 6,000 civilians, and uprooted hundreds of thousands this year.

On Sunday, Hussein named what he said was an "all-inclusive" cabinet.
Formed in 2004, the interim government was created on a "4.5" clan formula -- by which major positions were shared between the four main clans and the Fifth clan.

Many ministers returned from earlier cabinets, and only a handful came from outside the parliament -- permitted for the first time by constitutional change made earlier this year in hope of bringing on board more experienced technocrats.

"We gave the government an opportunity to inject fresh blood from outside parliament but it has not. We feel the prime minister was misled," said a senior parliament figure who spoke on condition of anonymity.

(Additional reporting by Aweys Yusuf in Mogadishu, Abdiqani Hassan in Bosasso, and Bryson Hull and Guled Mohamed in Nairobi; Writing by Katie Nguyen; Editing by Keith Weir)

Source: Reuters