www.chinaview.cn 2005-01-07 20:23:10
NAIROBI, Jan. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi retained former warlords in his 91-member cabinet announced here Friday, completing Somalia's first government in almost 14 years.
Ghedi named a new cabinet of 42 ministers, 42 assistants and 7 ministers of state without portfolio, 89 of whom are men and three women drawn from Somalia's different clans.
The new cabinet is composed of members of the previous transitional national government, warlords and those not tainted.
Ghedi, who himself was reappointed three weeks after parliament voted him out, said he had named a government of reconciliation which he urged to work as a team to implement its agenda in Somalia.
Somalia has been without an effective government since 1991 when the regime of Muhammad Siad Barre was toppled, following which the country plunged into anarchy and factional violence.
Since the breakdown of the Somali central government, conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, which groups Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia, Somali National Reconciliation Conference began in October 2002 in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret, and was moved to Nairobi in February 2003.
As a result of the conference, Somali Transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf was inaugurated on October 14, 2004 in Nairobi.
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