Transitional Government

The president of Somalia was hospitalized Tuesday with breathing difficulties and a severe cough, but officials said that his condition did not appear life-threatening and that he planned to travel to London for further treatment. President Abdullahi Yusuf, 72, has a history of health problems. He underwent a liver transplant in 1996. Yusuf, a former military leader from northern Somalia who helped overthrow the dictatorship of Maj. Gen.

BEIRUT - Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi made a new push Thursday to draw Syrian officials and rebels into negotiations, aiming to revive a plan for a transitional government and elections that faltered because of disagreements over the future of President Bashar Assad. The effort by the Algerian diplomat came after weeks of both sides in Syria being focused more on fighting. Rebels appear to be making gains, seizing military bases and fighting for control of suburbs around the capital, Damascus.

With the 1992 Parliament now up and running, the question everyone is asking here is: What does President Frederik W. de Klerk plan to put on the negotiating table? And that's just how the president likes it. "This is like a bridge game," De Klerk told reporters this week. "I've played one card, and it's a good card. But I'm not about to show you my hand." With the high stakes involved, one reporter asked, isn't it more like a poker game? "No," De Klerk answered without hesitation.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somalia's new parliament was sworn in and convened for the first time Monday, but a scheduled presidential vote was not held. No firm date has been given for the vote, which could be delayed days or weeks. The changeover came as the mandate for Somalia's unpopular United Nations-backed transitional government expired, a moment Somalis hope will lead to peace and stability after more than two decades of lawlessness and violence. Once parliament has elected a speaker, a process expected to take a few days, legislators are to vote in a new president.

Madagascar's outgoing prime minister refused to quit Saturday, endangering a power-sharing agreement brokered by mediators to keep peace on the island. Monja Roindefo said he does not acknowledge the mediators' appointment on Tuesday of Eugene Mangalaza as a prime minister in the transitional government. Roindefo said he did not feel that all parties involved in the negotiations were given a say in the appointment. "A simple press release cannot dissolve a government and appoint a prime minister," he said.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somalia's new parliament was sworn in and convened for the first time Monday, but a scheduled presidential vote was not held. No firm date has been given for the vote, which could be delayed days or weeks. The changeover came as the mandate for Somalia's unpopular United Nations-backed transitional government expired, a moment Somalis hope will lead to peace and stability after more than two decades of lawlessness and violence. Once parliament has elected a speaker, a process expected to take a few days, legislators are to vote in a new president.

In a stunning attack on Somalia's shaky government, a suicide bombing Thursday at a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu killed three Cabinet ministers and least 12 others, government officials said. The bomber sneaked in amid hundreds of guests and graduating medical students at the Shamo Hotel in the south of the capital. Government forces control only a sliver of Mogadishu, and the attack was another indication of the reach of Islamist militants and Al Qaeda operatives. The carnage was a devastating blow to a transitional government, backed by U.S. arms shipments and African Union troops, that is fighting a civil war against an Islamic insurgency.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all countries Thursday to provide urgent military support to Somalia's beleaguered transitional government, warning that its survival is at stake. Two allied Islamist insurgent groups -- Shabab and the Islamic Party -- launched an offensive after the return of an exiled insurgent leader in April that has killed hundreds of Somalis and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.

This country's transitional government has abolished the Islamic system of taxation introduced in 1984 by deposed President Jaafar Numeiri and will revert to a conventional Western-style system. Finance Minister Awad Abdel-Majeed told a weekend news conference that the transitional government would draft a new tax law along the lines of the 1971 system in the next few days.

Soldiers toppled the government of the tiny West African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe while President Fradique de Menezes was in neighboring Nigeria. Troops with machine guns patrolled the quiet streets of the capital, Sao Tome. Nigeria, which expects to help Sao Tome and Principe develop its oil reserves, issued a warning that fell just short of a threat of military intervention, should its interests be jeopardized. Coup leader Maj.

BEIRUT - The United States and other world powers meeting Saturday in Geneva threw their weight behind a United Nations-brokered plan for a transitional government for Syria, but the move appeared to raise more questions than it answered. Chief among them: What about Syrian President Bashar Assad? Russia has rejected the U.S. insistence that Assad go, and the new transitional plan doesn't appear to have resolved their fundamental disagreement. Beyond the new proposal, the "action group" of nations vowed to launch a fresh diplomatic effort aimed at reviving a U.N.-brokered peace deal that is now in tatters.

The remains of more than two dozen men lay facedown in the dirt, their hands bound behind them. Plastic cuffs cut into the flesh of their wrists; bullet holes riddled their blood-spattered backs. According to fighters for Libya's transitional government who say they found the corpses last week, the men were recent victims of supporters of ousted Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi. The fighters say all were executed by loyalist forces in a paroxysm of revenge and fury as former rebels advanced into the crumbling Kadafi stronghold of Surt.

After weeks of failed offensives, insubstantial incursions and withering counterattacks, it seemed Saturday that the end game had begun in earnest for Moammar Kadafi's hometown, Surt. Street by street, fighters for Libya's transitional government captured a residential district that had been riddled with loyalist snipers. "Kadafi's men are 300 meters away," a fighter shouted over the machine-gun fire, pointing to the end of the street where smoke curled from a mortar round explosion.

Forces loyal to ousted Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi put up fierce resistance Friday on two fronts, fending off revolutionary fighters trying to take a pair of holdout cities that have defied the nation's new transitional government. Anti-Kadafi fighters launched major attacks on Surt, the coastal town where Kadafi was born, and Bani Walid, a desert city that benefited from the longtime leader's financial largesse. But in both cases the attackers' predictions of quick and decisive victories proved wrong.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid a historic visit Thursday to the Libyan capital, praising the nation's revolution, urging fugitive former leader Moammar Kadafi to surrender and sending a not-so-subtle message to Syria that room for autocratic rule was shrinking in the region. Both nations played a leading role in the withering NATO air campaign that was essential in toppling Kadafi's rule after more than four decades in power. The two leaders were the first foreign heads of state to visit Libya since Kadafi was ousted from the capital last month and went on the run. "This does go beyond Libya; this is a moment when the Arab spring can become an Arab summer," Cameron told a news conference with Sarkozy and leaders of Libya's transitional government.

Libyan rebels fought heavily armed holdouts in several districts of Tripoli on Wednesday as they struggled to consolidate their grip on the capital, a day after sacking Moammar Kadafi's feared command-and-control center. Gunfire, the thud of mortars and the whiz of an occasional rocket filled the air over the city. Terrified residents mostly stayed indoors, with commercial districts largely shut down. Rebels armed with assault rifles manned checkpoints along roads, searching cars for contraband and preventing civilians from entering huge swaths of the city's southeast quadrant because of ongoing gun battles.

Leftist rebels and representatives of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government are to meet today in Caracas, Venezuela, to discuss a cease-fire, government officials and Roman Catholic church sources said. The church is mediating the talks. After a third round of talks Oct. 4-5, the government and Marxist-led rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front agreed to form two joint committees to study a cease-fire and other aspects of a regional peace plan signed Aug. 7.

A day after the fall of Mogadishu, Somalia's transitional prime minister made a symbolic visit Friday to the tense capital, where he was met with a mix of cheers and jeers. In one part of the city, thousands of supporters waved flowers and leaves at his passing convoy; in another, rioters threw stones and burned tires in protest.

Leaders of Egypt's transitional military government, at times faced with angry shouting and interruptions during a meeting with activists Wednesday night, declined to address controversial issues such as the "virginity tests" female protesters say they were subjected to by security forces, participants said. The crowd of about 1,200 people at a theater in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis pressed the four generals on issues including the alleged virginity tests, the number of people killed during this year's popular uprising and whether former President Hosni Mubarak would be tried.