Baidoa: Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammad Gedi on Monday named a new 31-member cabinet, in a push to rejuvenate a government paralysed for nearly two years by infighting and now threatened by powerful Islamists.
It was not immediately clear whether Gedi included any Islamists or Islamist allies in the new, streamlined cabinet.
President Abdullahi Yousuf on August 7 dissolved what he called a bloated and ineffective cabinet, and ordered Gedi to name a smaller one that would be reviewed on its performance in three months.
Gedi missed Yousuf's seven-day deadline by a week.
The announcement was made after Gedi consulted with Yousuf, parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Shaikh Adan, lawmakers and traditional elders, a government spokesman said.
"After the meetings the prime minister re-formed his government," spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told a news conference in the government's temporary base, Baidoa.
Gedi's reshuffle was part of a deal brokered by government ally Ethiopia, after he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote on July 30 and saw half his Cabinet resign in frustration over his reluctance to negotiate with the Islamists.
The Islamists' rise is the single biggest threat to the interim government, formed at peace talks in Kenya in 2004 as a 14th stab at bringing central authority to a country in anarchy since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohammad Siad Barre.
The Islamists emerged in June as a new political and military force after defeating US-backed warlords and seizing control of Mogadishu and strategic areas around it.
