Prime Minister Gedi of the transitional Somali government has been consolidating power by driving out moderates. It's not clear just how compromise will be found. Gedi's claim, ""The warlord era in Somalia is now over" seems premature at best.
washingtonpost.com
Ethiopian forces backing Somalia's weak transitional government have taken over Kismaayo, the last stronghold of the country's Islamic movement, and on Monday were chasing the remnants of the Islamic militia along the Indian Ocean coast toward the Kenyan border about 100 miles to the south.
In the final stage of a dramatic power shift in the fragile Horn of Africa nation, the Islamic fighters abandoned their heaviest weapons early Monday morning and took off for villages in the forest, with Ethiopian and government troops in hot pursuit of key leaders, including three suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
[..]With the most hard-core militiamen headed their way, Kenyan authorities on Monday tightened security along their border with Somalia, which extends for more than 420 miles. Many of the large number of Somali refugees in Kenya may be sympathetic to the Islamic leaders, and analysts say it would be easy for the fighters to melt into the local population.
Kenyan and Somali government officials have said that if they capture the three embassy bombing suspects, they will hand them over to the U.S. government. Meanwhile, some analysts speculated that the Kenyan government, which has pushed the Somali transitional government to include the more moderate leaders of the Islamic Courts movement, might allow those leaders to take refuge in Kenya.
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