Interim President Abdiqasim Salad Hasan has begun consultations with the clan-based
Transitional National Assembly (TNA) to form a government. He
has invited the parliamentary clan groups to submit two names each over the next
three days, sources close to the president told IRIN. After
choosing a prime minister, subject to a vote of confidence by the parliament,
Abdiqasim will then announce ministerial posts and the cabinet. "He
is not rushing to appoint, there is plenty of space for negotiations and consultations,"
diplomatic sources said. Abdiqasim is back in Djibouti, where the Somali peace
talks were hosted and the elected parliament remains, after visiting Saudi Arabia,
Libya and New York. Speaker of Parliament Abdullahi Abdulla Derow, has returned
to Djibouti from a parliamentary conference in Nigeria and is expected to call
a parliamentary session this week, diplomatic sources told IRIN. Only
a few hundred Somalis remain in Arta, some 30 km south of Djibouti town, where
the enormous conference tent used for the peace talks remains a meeting house
for the newly elected parliamentarians.
More than 2,000 Somalis were hosted by the Djibouti government for the talks,
and were provided with transport home after the election of the president. Most
of the members of parliament are now staying in Arta, or hotels in Djibouti town,
and are involved in "a lot of informal contacts and talks", political sources
told IRIN.
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