By Sahal Abdulle
Thursday, December 07, 2006
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MOGADISHU, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Somalia's powerful Islamist movement said on Thursday that U.N. endorsement of an African peacekeeping force will "add fuel to the fire" in the Horn of Africa nation many fear is on the verge of all-out war.
But the interim government -- whose aspirations of restoring central rule to Somalia were dented by the rise of the Islamists this year -- welcomed the prospect of military support and cited resolution promoter the United Sates for special thanks.
Despite fears that a peacekeeping force may draw foreign jihadists into Somalia, the U.N. Security Council approved the measure on Wednesday with the explicit aim of propping up the Western-backed government of President Abdullahi Yusuf.
The Yusuf government's bid to restore central rule for the first time since 1991 has been hurt by the Islamists' takeover of Mogadishu and a swathe of south Somalia since June.
Following European pressure on Washington, the U.N. motion was watered down to bar peacekeepers from border states, whose presence in Somalia was viewed as potentially inflammatory.
Other changes, according to diplomats, included specifying that exemptions to the U.N. arms embargo would apply only to troop-contributing African states, and that the force's first job would be "monitoring".
That, however, did not mollify the Islamists. They have increasingly used peacekeeping plans as a rallying cry and view the resolution as being openly pro-government and against them. "The U.N. authorising new weapons is like adding fuel to the fire," Islamist spokesman Abdirahman Ali Mudey said.
Ibrahim Hassan Addow, the Islamists' de facto foreign minister, said his militarily strong movement would forcibly resist any foreign forces. "We see this as an invading force and we will have to defend our country," he told Reuters.
Diplomats, however, view any actual arrival of peacekeepers as a long way off. They said the U.N. resolution may be designed more for political than practical impact at the moment.
Let alone unresolved issues like funding, fears of a regional war may also make the African Union baulk.
Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden has said any deployment of foreign forces in Somalia would be an anti-Muslim "crusade".
And arch-foes Ethiopia and Eritrea already aid the government and Islamists respectively, U.N. experts say.
SOMALI GOVERNMENT THANKS U.S.
Government officials in Baidoa, the only town it controls, praised the U.N. move and thanked its main backer the United States. Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo co-sponsored.
"We welcome this decision and we thank all the members of the Security Council, especially the American government," Deputy Defence Minister Salad Ali Jelle told Reuters.
"This will bring solutions not war."
U.N. special envoy to Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, said the east African inter-governmental body IGAD and the AU would now flesh out their existing plans for deployment.
"All that is left is to determine the financing," Fall, who was in Mogadishu to see the Islamists this week, told Reuters.
"I told them that this (resolution) is not a move to attack them. The deployment has only one goal and that is to protect the institutions in Baidoa ... and to open the way to dialogue."
The Islamists and government had been due to meet in Sudan next week for talks. But that looks unlikely now.
Analyst Matt Bryden said the likelihood of war would depend on the vehemence of the Islamist response to the resolution, which he said "clearly aligned" Washington with the government.
"If they are impressed by the changes made and the nuances introduced by the Europeans, they may hold off," he said.
"If they take it as an endorsement of the Ethiopian presence, or wilfully misread it, it clearly brings the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Baidoa closer," he added, noting the "surreal" absence in the U.N. resolution of a reference to Ethiopian troops already in Somalia. (Additional reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi)
Source: Reuters, Dec 07, 2006