Sheik Sharif Ahmed, has been in the job barely two days but already he looks like an old pro at the delicate game of diplomacy

The new president of Somalia, the moderate Islamist cleric Sheik Sharif Ahmed, has been in the job barely two days but already he looks like an old pro at the delicate game of diplomacy.
There he was on Sunday, in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper, praising the U.S. role in Somalia.
One can say that the U.S. position towards Somalia has become honest, Ahmed, a former schoolteacher, told the El Shourouk newspaper. We think that the American view of Somalia is now positive.
Um, Mr. President, don't meant to interrupt your inaugural jubilee, but didn't the United States secretly pay off Somalia's most brutish warlords to try to defeat your Islamic Courts Union in 2006? Didn't they accuse you of sheltering al Qaida operatives? When the courts gained strength, didn't the U.S. help Ethiopia drive you from power, sending you into exile and fueling a violent insurgency by your onetime militia, al Shabaab?
Yes, yes and yes.
But Sheik Sharif's comments indicate that this is a different United States. Even before Barack Obama became president, the Bush administration realized that its Somalia strategy had completely backfired and that maybe a moderate Islamist government, which many Somalis would welcome, would be preferable to the unreformed, U.N.-bankrolled warlord that ran the place until recently. U.S. officials started to reach out to Islamist leaders -- including, I am told, Hassan Dahir Aweys, a hardliner who has split with Sheik Sharif but whose support would be a huge boost to the ongoing peace negotiations in Djibouti.
Sheik Sharif still seems to be the soft-spoken, relatively moderate, law-and-order kind of guy he was when my McClatchy colleague, Hannah Allam, met him in 2006. Back then, he told her he didn't want conflict with the U.S. but also didn't plan on having full diplomatic ties. Now, he says, In the framework of the Djibouti negotiations, America has become a force which supports peace.
A source at the U.S. Embassy called me today to say that the folks in the Fortress had noted Sheik Sharif's comments, which were appreciated. Well played, Mr. President. As for that other new head of state, President Obama has yet to do anything on Somalia. Given recent U.S. history, that's far from a bad thing.