MOGADISHU, 2 July 2006 — A powerful warlord has surrendered his weapons to Mogadishu’s Islamists rulers as the group continues to assert its authority across the Horn of Africa country, officials said yesterday.

The warlord and former minister for religious affairs Omar Finnish handed over more than 200 weapons, including machine guns and mortars, as well as members of his militia to the Islamist leadership.

“We accepted what our traditional and religious elders requested us to do, which is to surrender all our weapons to the Council of Islamic Courts,” Ahmed Aden Dacwo, an aide to Omar told reporters yesterday.

The Islamic movement ejected US-backed secular warlords from Mogadishu on June 5 and this week announced they were expanding their control across the country.

Residents of Mogadishu’s Madina district had lived in fear of renewed fighting, worried that Omar would attempt to recapture his lost territory.

“This is a good thing, it is a good culture where we are seeing those defeated now surrendering,” said Halimo Jeyte, a mother-of-two.

Although the warlords no longer pose much danger, Somalia remains tense after the interim government strongly attacked the new hard-line Islamists leadership in Mogadishu.

“I think the future is very uncertain,” said one resident of Mogadishu. “We don’t know what is going to happen between the Islamic courts and the government.”

Islamist leadership and the interim government met in Khartoum last month to defuse tension between them since the Islamist victory. They recognized each other and agreed to meet again this month but the talks are now in doubt.

The naming of the new leadership in the Islamist movement, particularly hard-line cleric Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys as their leader, has raised concern in the internationally recognized government, the United States and in neighboring Ethiopia.

Ethiopia which opposes the creation of an Islamic state in Somalia has called Aweys a terrorist, which he denies.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli urged dialogue between the different parties in Somalia and said this was the only way that political and economic stability could be restored in the Horn of Africa country.