Cleric predicts defiance of new gov't

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A hardline Somali cleric with big influence in Mogadishu has said Muslims will oppose the Horn of Africa's fledgling new government because it is based on anti-Islamic principles.

"A government that does not rule by the book of God does not deserve support," Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweis, 61, told Reuters at his house in Mogadishu.

Aweis, who is on a U.S. list of most wanted terrorists and runs one of Mogadishu's powerful sharia courts, said the new interim administration formed in Kenya in 2004 cannot be supported because it was organised on secular lines.

That would clash with the Islamic sharia law that suits the largely Muslim nation of 10 million people, he argued.

"Such a government will only bring losses because people will clash, hate and disobey it and so it will not have authority over them," he said in the weekend interview.

The government, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf, relocated to Somalia last year but has been unable to impose authority on the country and remains based in the provincial town of Jowhar due to fears over security in the capital Mogadishu.

It is unclear how much popular support it can command.

Somalia has been without proper central government since warlords toppled former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The new government aims to move to Mogadishu once it has guarantees for safety and resolves a rift within its ranks.

Aweis said Islamists would not oppose the government with violence, but doubted it would have any success.

"We cannot stop them from coming to Mogadishu or fight them," he said. "We feel that they are very weak people who cannot even help themselves, people who do not even think about the people's needs but only their selfish desires."

Aweis resurfaced in 2004 after vanishing amid heightened U.S. scrutiny after the September 11 attacks. Western security services see Somalia as a potential safe-haven for terrorists.

He runs the Ifka Halanka Islamic court in north Mogadishu. The courts are the only source of organised justice for the city's nearly one million people.

A former soldier, Aweis started preaching in the late 1970s and has a burning desire to see Somalia under sharia law.

Aweis said it was Somalia's only way out of its current turmoil and lawlessness.

"We have done a lot of ground work," he said.

"We are confident that soon people will be ready to be governed by the sharia law."

He urged Yusuf's government to view the Islamists not as enemies but as a legitimate opposition group.

By Guled Mohamed