NAIROBI, Kenya (August 27, 2000
8:22 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com)
- Somalia's newly-elected President Abdulkassim Salat Hassan
promised to "serve all the Somali people" as he was
sworn in Sunday to lead the deeply-divided country, Djibouti
television said.
Salat, 58, a former interior minister under the late dictator
Mohamed Siad Barre, was elected early Saturday by a transitional
parliament sitting in the resort town of Arta, some 20 miles
outside Djibouti.
A member of the Hawiye clan, he is the country's first
president in almost a decade. The east African country has been
ruled by rival warlords since the 1991 overthrow of Mohamed Siad
Barre.
His election is one of the key stages of a Djibouti-sponsored
reconciliation process, begun with the inauguration of the
transitional parliament earlier this month.
"I will serve all the Somali people according to my
ability," Salat promised, in a high-profile ceremony
attended by several foreign leaders including Ethiopian Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi, and presidents Omar al-Beshir of Sudan,
Ali Abdallah Saleh of Yemen and Issaias Afeworki of Eritrea.
Three warlords in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Saturday
denounced Salat's election and vowed to fight him.
Salat promised to talk with regions which had not taken part
in the peace and reconciliation process.
"I will respect the territorial integrity of Somalia and
I will talk to the regions that are currently in peace but did
not join the Somali peace initiative," he said.
Two self-declared republics inside Somalia, Somaliland in the
northwest and Puntland in the northeast refused to take part in
the peace talks, with the Somaliland parliament saying it was
"treasonable" to attend the conference.
France was represented at the ceremony by Cooperation
Minister Charles Josselin, Italy by foreign ministry official
Maurizio Melani and Egypt and Kenya by their deputy foreign
ministers.
China and the United States sent ambassadors.
Salat, who between 1973 and 1990 was successively minister of
industry, trade, labor, information and the interior, is now
expected to name a new government.
The government will first sit in the Somali town of Baidoa,
until security improves in Mogadishu, which is divided up
between rival militia groups.