NAIROBI, Kenya — Nearly six weeks into what some outside observers describe as the most treacherous job in the world, Sharif Ahmed, the newly elected president of Somalia, said his government has “opened our hands and our hearts” to Islamist insurgents in an effort to promote reconciliation over war in the conflict-ridden Horn of Africa country.
“They have no option but to accept peace,” Ahmed, a widely respected moderate Muslim, said of the group known as al- Shabaab, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
The 44-year-old leader was in Nairobi as part of a round of visits to several African countries and possibly Saudi Arabia before he heads back to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, where his new government and allied militias are battling al-Shabaab for control.
