FACTBOX: Somalia, a country torn apart

(Reuters) - Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on Wednesday, amid speculation he would quit as parliament debated the president's move to oust him.

Gedi, in his latest battle for political survival against President Abdullahi Yusuf, again denied through his allies that he was going to step down.

The political turmoil came as violence continued in Mogadishu. On Wednesday, up to 60 Somali intelligence officers stormed a U.N. compound in Mogadishu and seized the World Food Program's local chief of operations at gunpoint.

Here are some details of the violent situation in Somalia over the last two years.

* A NEW ORDER:

-- In June 2006, after winning a bloody three-month battle against U.S.-backed warlords, Islamist militia calling themselves the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) seized Mogadishu. Washington accused the SICC of al Qaeda links.

-- Taming the capital has been the holy grail for every attempt at government since 1991 and only the Islamists succeeded in stabilizing it, by imposing what critics called a harsh version of Islamic law.

-- They further spread their control to most of south Somalia and advanced on the government's base in Baidoa.

* A QUICK RETURN:

-- With tacit U.S. approval, Somalia's neighbor Ethiopia sent in troops to prop up the government and defend against an impending Islamist attack on Baidoa, which came in December.

-- The better-armed Ethiopian and Somali force advanced rapidly and ran the Islamists all the way to Somalia's southern tip. Mogadishu fell to the government in the last days of December, without a shot being fired after the Islamists fled.

* A NEW GOVERNMENT:

-- The first meeting of the country's parliament on home soil took place in Baidoa in February 2006, nearly two years after it was formed in the safety of neighboring Kenya.

-- Lawmakers elected Ethiopian-backed warlord Abdullahi Yusuf as president and Ali Mohamed Gedi as prime minister to run the 14th attempt at government in Somalia since warlords ousted the last president, dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, in 1991.

-- Prime Minister Ali Mohamad Gedi entered Mogadishu at the end of 2006, just a day after the Islamists fled. President Yusuf entered the Somali capital in January 2007 for the first time since taking office.

-- However Gedi and Yusuf, who both ascended to power via Ethiopian maneuvering, have long feuded. A truce since the last no-confidence vote in 2006 shattered earlier this year when they backed rival concerns looking for oil exploration rights.