Abdullahi Yusuf has been elected Somali president

Ethiopian-backed warlord Abdullahi Yusuf has been elected &to= english.pravda.ru/world/2001/11/08/20384.html ' target=_blank>Somali president by lawmakers in the 14th attempt in a decade to restore government to the lawless African country. "Abdullahi Yusuf is the winner," assembly speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan told MPs meeting as an electoral college in neighbouring Kenya, saying Yusuf won 189 votes against 79 for opponent Abdullahi Addou. Two ballots were spoiled. Yusuf will head a &to= english.pravda.ru/yougoslavia/2002/04/19/27782.html ' target=_blank>transitional federal government that will attempt to shepherd the broken country of up to 10 million to elections under a new constitution in five years' time. Seen by U.S. officials as a haven for militants suspected of &to= english.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/28/35459.html' target=_blank>al Qaeda links, militia-infested Somalia remains so dangerous that the interim parliament held the vote across the border in Nairobi. "I praise the Somali people for their commitment to the process and for electing a new president in an orderly and transparent manner," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative to Somalia, Winston Tubman, told Reuters. "I hope that the Somali people will support the outcome because that will encourage the international community to give Somalis the backing they need," he added. The poll, the culmination of a two-year-old reconciliation process, is intended to produce an executive head of state who will reimpose order on a country long a byword for anarchy. The election had gone into a third round on Sunday after no outright winner emerged in the first and second ballots, which were contested by more than two dozen candidates and were also won by Yusuf, informs Reuters. According to ANC News, members of Somalia's transitional parliament on Sunday elected a former army colonel as interim president, the final stage of a peace plan meant to end 13 years of civil war in the Horn of Africa nation. Col. Abdullahi Yusuf won with 189 votes in a third round of voting, Shariif Hassan Sheikh Aden told the 275-member transitional parliament and regional foreign affairs ministers, who observed the vote. Former Finance Minister Abdullahi Addow garnered 79 votes in the last round, which narrowed the race to two candidates after none of the original 28 won a majority, said Aden, the parliament speaker. The vote was held in Kenya because of a lack of security in Somalia, where the country is divided into fiefdoms controlled by warlords. Thousands of people have been killed in the war. Veteran politician and soldier Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed won Somalia's presidential election and promised to do all he could to rebuild his country which has been devastated by years of factional fighting and lacked a proper government since 1991. If he failed, he would quit, he pledged, after winning a third round run-off ballot of Somali lawmakers held in a sports stadium on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Somalia's own capital, Mogadishu, with its squabbling and heavily armed rival factions, was considered too dangerous a venue for the election. In the run-off, Yusuf, who has served as president of the autonomous northeastern region of Puntland since 1998 and as a faction leader and army officer before that, trounced his rival, former diplomat and minister Abdullahi Ahmed Adow, by 189 votes to 79. Twenty-four other candidates who entered the race earlier Sunday were either eliminated in the first two rounds or withdrew, publishes Cannelnewsasia.

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