Three of six second-round runners quit Somali presidential race

NAIROBI (AFP) - Three of six Somali presidential candidates who qualified for the second round in the election pulled out of the race moments before the start of the ballot, being held in the Kenyan capital.

Members of Somalia's 275-seat transitional assembly were voting in the election, which went into a second round shortly before 6:00 pm (1500 GMT).

First to drop out was a former Somali transitional leader, Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, followed by former finance minister Abdulraman Jamma Barre and warlord Mohammed Hussein Ado.

This left race leader Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, president of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland; Abdullahi Ahmed Adow, a former ambassador to Washington; and warlord Mohammed Afrah Qanyare, to fight the second round.

If none of the candidates wins a two-thirds majority, the two front-runners will face off on a simple majority basis.

"I am pulling out of the race and I will support anyone who is elected. That is democracy," Salat, who won just 15 votes in the first round, told the packed stadium, prompting applause from the assembly.

Salat's administration never managed to exert authority beyond a few pockets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

"All my life I have worked for a united Somalia and it is for that reason that I am withdrawing," Barre, half brother to Somalia's last president, the late Mohammed Siad Barre, toppled in 1991, said on announcing his withdrawal.

"For the sake of the Somali nation I give up my desire to be president," was Ado's valediction.