Somali president says insurgency gaining ground

Mogadishu: Somali President Abdullahi Yousuf has admitted Islamist insurgents now control most of the country and raised the prospect his government could completely collapse.

Fighters have been slowly advancing on the capital, raising the stakes in their two-year rebellion and undermining fragile UN-brokered peace talks to end 17 years of chaos in the Horn of Africa nation.

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

His remarks were aired by Somali media late on Saturday. "We, ourselves, are behind the problems and we are accountable in this world and in the hereafter. Insurgents have been capturing all towns and now control Elasha. It is every man for himself if the government collapses.

"The insurgents kill city cleaners, they will not spare legislators," Yousuf said.

Elasha is only 15km south of Mogadishu.

On Saturday, the insurgents 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.

Blame game

Yousuf blamed his government's ineffectiveness partly to disagreements between him and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussain.

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," Yousuf told the legislators.

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

Yousuf 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.

Islamists ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for half of 2006. Allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled them but they have waged an Iraq-style guerrilla campaign since then, gradually taking back territory. As when they controlled the capital in 2006, the insurgents are again providing much-needed security in many areas but are unpopular with many moderates.

The turmoil in Somalia has caused instability across the Horn of Africa, fuelling one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.