NAIROBI (AFP) – Hardline Somali leader??Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who has spearheaded a deadly military offensive in Mogadishu in recent days, on Thursday urged President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to leave office."I am calling on Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to abandon his self-proclaimed presidential job in order to spare the lives of Somalis," Aweys told AFP by phone from the Somali capital.Dozens of people have been killed since last week when insurgent forces including the radical Islamist Shebab group and Aweys' armed organisation Hezb al-Islam launched an unprecedented offensive to remove Ahmed from power.The internationally-backed president of Somalia's transitional federal administration only controls a handful of streets and buildings in Mogadishu.On Thursday, insurgent fighters were deployed around the presidency and the capital's key institutions, in a tense standoff with African Union peacekeepers and government forces."We have no real Somali government to speak of but foreign puppets who call themselves the leaders of Somalia," Awe
ys said, brushing off accusations by the United Nations that he was masterminding a coup."No country in the world will accept an imported leadership. The Somalis are equally free to reject that," he said...more..http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090514/wl_africa_afp/somaliaunrestpolitics_20090514110802INTERVIEW-U.N. envoy "destroying" Somalia - Aweys
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LE392447.htm
Mogadishu braces for final insurgent assault
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090514/wl_africa_afp/somaliaunrest_20090514114930
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