No subject

backed the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia -- the fact
previously extensively reported by the Times' own Jeffrey Gettleman
and Mark Mazzetti -- to oust the Union of Islamic Courts that the
paper is now extolling for its virtue of moderation. -- Yoshie

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/world/africa/31somalia.html>
January 31, 2009
Moderate Elected President in Somalia
By MOHAMMED IBRAHIM

MOGADISHU, Somalia =97 A moderate Islamic cleric was elected president
of Somalia early Saturday morning by the Somali Parliament, which was
meeting in Djibouti.

The cleric, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, headed the Islamic courts
movement that governed the capital, Mogadishu, and most of southern
Somalia until 2006. Some analysts had said they thought that Sheik
Sharif had the best chance of all the candidates for president to
unite Somalis, because of his Islamist roots and his acceptability to
a variety of factions.

Parliament was selecting a replacement for the former president,
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who resigned in late December after four years
in office. A former warlord, Mr. Yusuf had been widely blamed for
Somalia's deepening crisis and had been steadily marginalized.

The lawmakers broke into applause when Sheik Sharif reached the
minimum number of votes needed for victory, 213, a little before 4
a.m. during an all-night session of Parliament. The legislators were
meeting in Djibouti, just north of Somalia, under a United
Nations-brokered deal to establish a unity government between the
transitional government and moderate Islamists.

"I promise that I will serve my people loyally and neutrally without
color or clan," Sheik Sharif told the lawmakers after the balloting.
"I call other Somalis who are not part of this peace process to join
us."

He defeated Gen. Maslah Mohamed Siad, the son of the former dictator,
Maj. Gen. Mohammed Siad Barre, in the second round of voting. The
outcome seemed likely after Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein withdrew
from the balloting after the first round. He had been considered Sheik
Sharif's main rival for the presidency, but he withdrew after winning
only 59 votes in the initial round.

In Mogadishu, where many people stayed up all night to follow the
election on radio and television, people celebrated in the streets
immediately afterward, with shots being fired into the air.

For Sheik Sharif, the burden of reconciling Somalia's 10 million
people and ending 18 years of bloodshed will be daunting. Most of
Somalia is controlled by various Islamist militias, although some of
the moderate Islamist groups support the government. The government
itself controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu.

The Shabab, a hard-line Islamist militia, controls most of Mogadishu
and much of the southern part of the country. It has denounced the
election in Djibouti as meaningless, and on Monday captured the seat
of Parliament in the town of Baidoa.

Somalia has been without a functioning central government since 1991,
when General Siad Barre was removed from power and the army fell into
the hands of clan militias, who turned on one another and left the
country largely in anarchy.