Somali govt says weakened by Islamist onslaught

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - President Abdullahi Yusuf has admitted Islamist insurgents now control most of Somalia and raised the prospect his government could completely collapse.

Islamists have been slowly advancing on the capital, raising the stakes in their two-year rebellion and undermining fragile U.N.-brokered peace talks to end 17 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa nation. A grenade attack Sunday killed four people and injured nine others in Baidoa, the government's seat.

"Most of the country is in the hands of Islamists and we are only in Mogadishu and Baidoa, where there is daily war," Yusuf told some of his legislators in neighboring Kenya Saturday.

His remarks were aired by Somali media late Saturday.

"We, ourselves, are behind the problems and we are accountable in this world and in the hereafter. Islamists have been capturing all towns and now control Elasha. It is every man for himself if the government collapses.

"The Islamists kill city cleaners, they will not spare legislators," Yusuf said.

Elasha is only 15 km (9 miles) south of Mogadishu.

The insurgents have been enforcing a strict form of Islamic law in areas they capture. Saturday, they whipped 32 people for taking part in a traditional dance in rebel-held territory south of the capital.

Last month, they stoned to death a young woman accused of adultery in the southern port of Kismayu. It was the first such public killing by the hardline militants for about two years.

Yusuf blamed his government's ineffectiveness partly on disagreements between him and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein.

HUMANITARIAN DISASTER

Regional head of states held a Somali crisis meeting at the end of October and demanded the four-year administration name a new cabinet within 15 days.

"The prime minister gave me a list of new cabinet ministers but I do not know how to approve names of those who destroyed our government when the constructive ones were excluded," Yusuf told the legislators.

"We have no government (ministers) and we should go back to our country very quickly and establish a government."

Yusuf is in Nairobi to meet MPs who remained after the regional meeting. Some analysts said he lobbied them to vote against the list of ministers the prime minister forwarded to him when the matter was tabled in parliament.