By Ahmed Mohamed BAIDOA, Somalia, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Somali lawmakers on Wednesday approved a law allowing non-legislators to become cabinet ministers, a move clearing the way for the president to nominate a replacement for Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi. "All lawmakers have approved the issue," parliament Speaker Sheikh Adan Madobe said before more than 200 assembled legislators, who moments before had overwhelmingly approved the measure by a hand vote after three days of debate. Legislators said the vote would speed the naming of a candidate to replace Gedi, who resigned 10 days ago after a lengthy feud with President Abdullahi Yusuf that all but paralysed government work amid an insurgency with Somali Islamists in Mogadishu. Yusuf's allies have said the president wanted the law changed to enable him to pick the candidate of his choice, and that passing the law clears the way for that. No one has yet to say who he is pushing to become prime minister. "The parliament will meet tomorrow and the president and the international community will attend ... from today the president will probably nominate a prime minister to replace the former one," lawmaker Ibrahim Isak Yarow told Reuters. Western nations had pushed for the law, a constitutional change recommended by a government-sponsored national reconciliation conference that ended in August, as a way to deepen the pool of qualified leaders. Some analysts have said the Somali interim government, formed on a clan-based formula at peace talks in Kenya, has been hampered by having to choose its ministers from legislators whose ranks include many warlords and uneducated clan rulers. Diplomats say the Somali government now can choose capable technocrats with experience from the diaspora. Close advisers to Yusuf have said that the candidate for prime minister will come from the powerful Hawiye clan, which always felt that Gedi was not their choice for the clan's top position in government. That dissatisfaction manifested itself in myriad ways during Yusuf's and Gedi's tenure, including the Hawiye support for insurgents in Mogadishu and resistance to returning the government to the city from its formation in Kenya in late 2004. (Writing by Bryson Hull, editing by Mary Gabriel)
