NAIROBI, Kenya — A power struggle inside Somalia’s transitional government grew worse Sunday as the president moved to fire the prime minister, who was pushing a peace deal that would weaken the president’s power.
President Abdullahi Yusuf said he had “fired” Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein for failing to restore security and form a functioning Cabinet. Yusuf said he would name a replacement in three days.
“The government has been paralyzed by incompetence, embezzlement and corruption,” Yusuf told reporters in Baidoa, Somalia, where Parliament is based. “I am obliged to rescue the country.”
But Hussein, who has clashed with Yusuf in recent months over Cabinet appointments and a pending peace deal with opposition groups, said the president lacks authority to oust him.
“The president is searching for any way to destroy my government,” said Hussein, who has called for Yusuf to resign. “My government will continue to operate as authorized by the parliament and transitional federal charter.”
The dispute raises the specter that the U.N.- recognized transitional government will fracture into two camps, as it did in 2006.
The timing of the clash appears related to an impending vote on a reconciliation agreement reached between the prime minister and a faction of moderate Islamists. Under the terms of the so-called Djibouti agreement, the opposition group would receive half the seats in Somalia’s parliament in return for ending its insurgency.
Lawmakers were expected to vote on the deal in the coming week.
Yusuf, whose power base would be diluted under the expanded parliament, has opposed the deal. Hussein has said it would help reduce violence by bringing opposition groups into the government.
Ethiopia, which has been supporting and protecting the transitional government with thousands of its soldiers since 2006, said this month it would withdraw its forces in the coming weeks. Experts worry that Somalia’s government, which controls only parts of Mogadishu and Baidoa, would collapse in the subsequent security vacuum.
