By Ahmed Mohamed
BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - Somalia's new prime minister met lawmakers and Western diplomats on Thursday to finalise his new cabinet, aiming to energise a government stalled by an Islamist insurgency and a refugee crisis.
Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, confirmed overwhelmingly by Somalia's parliament on Saturday, is expected to name his ministers by Saturday or Sunday, officials said.
"The premier is still convening with the lawmakers representing the clans. He is now finally meeting Darod clan and in few days he will announce his cabinet ministers," government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon said.
Witnesses said Hussein also met with U.N. Special Envoy to Somalia Ahmed Ould-Abdallah and Georges-Marc Andre, the top European Union diplomat for Somalia, in Baidoa, the south-central trading town where parliament sits.
Neither the United Nations nor the European Union would confirm the visit.
Parliament must confirm Hussein's appointments.
No longer hampered by a law limiting ministerial posts to legislators, Hussein is able to cast a wide net for what diplomats hope will be experienced technocrats cast in his mould.
The European Union local presidency in Nairobi, represented by Portugal, said in a statement it was "encouraged by the professional experience of the new Somali Prime Minister ... which will certainly help him in such important endeavour."
A career public servant and lawyer who worked as a senior police officer and Somalia's attorney general, Hussein has won wide praise for his work heading the Somali Red Crescent Society since 1991.
That was the year that warlords ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and plunged Somalia into an anarchy from which is has yet to fully emerge. The interim government is the 14th attempt to establish an effective central authority since then.
With just two years left in its mandate, the government of President Abdullahi Yusuf must work quickly to build up Somali institutions to prepare the Horn of Africa nation for democratic elections due for 2009.
Meanwhile, media owners barred from broadcasting in Mogadishu considered a list of temporary laws that Mogadishu Mayor and former warlord Mohamed Dheere has ordered them to accept or remain closed.
The rules bar interviews with government opponents, coverage of military operations without government permission and prohibits "false reports or criticisms" among other things, a copy of the rules seen by Reuters says.
On Thursday, joint Ethiopian-Somali government forces searched insurgent strongholds in Mogadishu for a second day.
Sporadic fighting broke out on Thursday in the Sqa Holaha district. Several people were wounded and at least one person was killed overnight, witnesses said.
"I saw four shopkeepers hit by the crossfire. They were bleeding, but no one could help them because everyone was escaping from the exchanges of gunfire between the insurgents and the Ethiopians," kiosk owner Farhio Dahir told Reuters.
The insurgents and allied Ethiopian-Somali forces have battled in the capital since the New Year, after the latter ran a militant Islamist movement out of the city during a lightning war to establish government control in southern Somalia.
The fighting, in which thousands have been killed, has sent what the United Nations says is 600,000 people -- or more than half of Mogadishu's population -- fleeing the city. Another 400,000 have also been displaced inside the country.
(Additional reporting by Bryson Hull in Nairobi and Aweys Yusuf in Mogadishu; Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Giles Elgood)
