By IINA,
Mogadishu : Opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has been elected as new president of Somalia after a run-off parliamentary vote in neighbouring Djibouti. Ahmed, the chairman of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) and the leader of the Islamic Courts Union, won the necessary 293 votes in a second round of voting just before 4am local time (0100GMT) today. The new president, who briefly ruled Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia in 2006 before being ousted by the Ethiopian military, defeated Maslah Mohamed Siad, son of ex-president Mohamed Siad Barre. “We have 293 votes for Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and 126 for Siad,” Hussein Mohamed Jama, the head of the presidential electoral commission, said. “I declare Sharif Sheikh Ahmed the president of Somalia after winning this election,” Aden Mohamed Nur, the parliament speaker, said.
His other main rival, Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister, pulled out of the election following the first round. Hussein, shaking Ahmed’s hand after addressing the parliament, said: “I thank you very much and I am very hopeful everything will go smoothly and end as the people wish.” “I am ready to co-operate with whoever is elected to make Somalia a peaceful country,” he later said. The parliament met in neighboring Djibouti due to instability in Somalia. Ahmed vowed to form a broad government and invited all armed groups in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation to join the UN-sponsored reconciliation effort. In a brief acceptance speech, he vowed to reach out to the former transitional government as well as to al-Shabab, an offshoot of the ICU which rejects talks. “Very soon, I will form a government which represents the people of Somalia. We will live peacefully with East African countries and we want to co-operate with them,” he said. “I am extending a hand to all Somali armed groups who are still opposed to this process and inviting them to join us,” he said.