Somali govt sees African peacekeepers in weeks

MEDIA BAN REVOKED

Also on Tuesday, the Somali government relaxed a ban on four major media outlets it had closed, accusing them of biased coverage during the recent war.

Officials said the media, including two of Somalia's largest independent broadcasters and the local office of Al Jazeera TV, aired unconfirmed reports and favored the Islamists.

But Monday's closures brought the government a blaze of unwelcome publicity and protests from both local and foreign media watchdogs, who said it was an affront to democracy.

Media executives emerged from a lengthy meeting with government officials on Tuesday to announce they were going back on the air. "The government reversed the ban," Ali Iman Sharmarke, co-owner of HornAfrik broadcaster, told Reuters.

"The international media and international organizations, especially the ones who work to protect the media, played a major role in the lifting of this ban."

The radio stations of HornAfrik and another major independent broadcaster, Shabelle Media Network, could be heard soon after, a Reuters correspondent in Mogadishu confirmed.

As well as Al Jazeera TV, the other broadcaster affected was the Koranic radio station IQK.

(Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu; Daniel Wallis, Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi)