Somali MPs choose new president
Moderate Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has been elected Somalia’s new president, after a secret ballot of members of parliament.Ahmed comfortably won a majority in a second round of voting after one of the frontrunners, Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, withdrew.The election followed the resignation of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.MPs met in Djibouti because of instability in Somalia, where Islamist militias control much of the country. Ahmed was until recently the leader of an opposition movement accused of having links to al-Qaeda.He won the election as the one man who may be able to straddle the political extremes between the secular warlords, who until now have dominated government, and the Islamist al-Shabab militia.Ahmed has been sworn in as president and will be representing Somalia at an African Union summit in Ethiopia over the weekend.