Somali premier appoints three deputies

Nairobi- Kenya (PANA) -- One of Somalia's leading warlords and key powerbroker in Mogadishu Hussein Farah Aideed and two others have been appointed deputy Prime Ministers in a new national unity cabinet announced in Nairobi Tuesday, officials said.
The Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi appointed Aideed to be one of his three deputies, who will also hold key ministerial portfolios.
Ghedi also appointed three deputy ministers and four ministers to complete his 34-member cabinet in the first all-inclusive government to lead the war torn Somalia.
He has now brought in all the key Somali personalities whose exclusion from the government was seen by analysts to be a threat to the country's future peace.
"After long consultations with the various Somali parties, the Prime Minister has come up with a broad-based, all-inclusive cabinet of 34- members, which was completed late Monday," said Yusuf Mohammed Ishmael, the Presidential spokesman.
   Yusuf said all Somali factions are now represented in the new cabinet, with some faction leaders being given important ministerial positions.
Ghedi named the prominent Mogadishu faction leader Hussein Farah Aideed as deputy premier and minister for home affairs.
A former high-ranking United Nations employee, Mohammud Abdullahi Jama and Sheikh Adan Mohammed Nur were also named as deputy premiers and ministers for sea transport and religious affairs, respectively, Ishmael said.
In the previous 27-member cabinet, Ghedi had appointed three other top warlords, including a minister for Militia training and integration.
Another key factional leader, Muhammad Qanyare Afrah, who boycotted the swearing-in ceremony last week of some 27 ministers earlier appointed to the cabinet, was named minister for internal security at a ceremony attended by the recently-elected Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
"The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is now complete, let us go back home and face the realities on the ground and rebuild Somalia," Ghedi said during the swearing-in of the additional ministers last night.
"You cannot justify our presence in Kenya anymore.
It cannot be accepted by the host country and international community as well," Ghedi reiterated in a speech during the swearing-in ceremony.
Meanwhile, the new Somali cabinet has begun attracting international interest from gender activists who are highly critical that it only has one woman despite the recognisable participation of the women folk during the two-year peace negotiations in Nairobi.
Somalia women lawmakers have decried the lack of gender balance in the new cabinet, which has only one full woman minister, Fawzia Muhammad Sheikh, who is charged with gender affairs.
The Somali interim constitution adopted in Nairobi stipulates that 12 percent of the members of parliament should be women.
However, in reality they only account for eight percent of the current 275 legislators.