Thursday, January 18, 2007

talks or bombs? who gets there first?

US vows to hunt Al-Qaeda fugitives in Somalia
Jan 18 /AFP

US operations in Somalia will go on until key Al-Qaeda targets are eliminated, a Pentagon official

UN envoy heads to Somalia for peace force talks
Jan 18 / Reuters

A U.N. envoy flew to Mogadishu to meet Somalia's president on Thursday for talks on security and the deployment of African peacekeepers.

US vows to hunt Al-Qaeda fugitives in Somalia
Jan 18 /AFP

US operations in Somalia will go on until key Al-Qaeda targets are eliminated, a Pentagon official said, as debate sharpened over Washington's next move in the stricken nation.

The remarks followed last week's assault in Somalia using a fearsome CH-130 fixed-wing aircraft which US officials say killed at least eight people, described here as radicals sheltering Al-Qaeda's top Africa leadership.

The fact that the top members of Osama bin Laden's network are still presumed at large in the country is sparking speculation of possible follow-up operations and questions on whether Somalia will become the latest hot battlefront in the 'war on terror.'

Theresa Whelan, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, said Wednesday US forces were working to ensure "international terrorists who were seeking refuge in Somalia are brought to justice."

"When that is done, our operations will cease," she said, at a half-day conference on Somalia sponsored by US think-tanks, without specifying how long operations might continue or offering details on future US troop deployments.

Some observers saw the strike as presaging an attempt to snuff out any resurgence of the fundamentalist Islamic Courts movement, which took control of most of Somalia last year before being ousted in a US-backed Ethiopian offensive.

The strike also fits into a long-term US goal of ensuring East Africa does not succeed Afghanistan as an Al-Qaeda terror base.

Speculation over possible future US action is also being spurred by the mighty firepower of a US aircraft carrier battlegroup prowling off the African coast.

"It's a good question, and it's easier to pose it than answer it," said John Pike, an analyst with GlobalSecurity.org.

"It would appear that the Islamic Courts envisioned a Taliban-like enterprise --- just because we have run them out of downtown Mogadishu, doesn't mean we have heard the end of it."

Critics of US policy say Washington exaggerated Al-Qaeda's sway on the movement, in pursuit of their own geopolitical ends in the strategically sensitive Horn of Africa region.

"I think the US and Ethiopia overstated the case in order to justify the military intervention and ongoing airstrikes," said John Prendergast, of the International Crisis Group.

"There is certainly a dangerous Al-Qaeda cell on the Indian Ocean coast that used Somalia as a safe haven and transshipment point (but) this kind of short-term military tactic devoid of any political strategy will backfire in the long run."

Senior US officials argue however that security operations in Somalia co-exist with vigorous US diplomatic and political attempts to stabilize the fragile state after its latest political earthquake.

As well as chasing terrorists, Washington was also trying to mobilize global support for Somalia's weak transitional government, and to speed the deployment of an African peacekeeping force, Jendayi Frazer, assistant US secretary of state for African affairs, said at the conference.

Clan elders and residents in the area targeted by the US operation close to the Kenyan border claimed 100 people were killed in numerous airstrikes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

Washington has said however that no civilians were killed, and that US forces carried out only a single airstrike.

"High value" Al-Qaeda militants the United States believes are in Somalia are Comoran Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, blamed for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Materials used in the blasts were smuggled through Somalia.

The other is Abu Taha al-Sudani, a Sudanese alleged to be close to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Stephen Morrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) which hosted the conference, said a US program that simply prioritized hunting alleged terrorists was insufficient.

"We know (the US) approach has been very concentrated on the counter-terror side that is highly controversial," he said at the conference.

"We need to be thinking about how we move beyond that."


UN envoy heads to Somalia for peace force talks
Jan 18 / Reuters

A U.N. envoy flew to Mogadishu to meet Somalia's president on Thursday for talks on security and the deployment of African peacekeepers.

Francois Lonseny Fall, a special representative of the UN secretary-general, was due to meet President Abdullahi Yusuf, who came to the capital last week for the first time since 2004.

"This is the first time we are visiting Yusuf in Mogadishu," Fall said.

"We are going to discuss issues including reconciliation and dialogue and see how we can work together for the successful deployment of African peacekeeping troops."

Somalia's interim government, once confined to the provincial town Baidoa, has called for the urgent deployment of a peacekeeping force after its troops, backed by Ethiopian armor, chased rival Islamists out of the capital and most of southern Somalia before the New Year.

It wants the force in Somalia by February and Ethiopia wants to pull out its troops in weeks, but most analysts say it will take far longer to organize and finance the mission.

High on Fall's agenda will be plans to disarm thousands of gunmen, muzzle a host of warlords blamed for years of chaos since the 1991 ouster of a dictator and develop a country mired in poverty.

Washington is pledging $40 million for Somalia, $16 million of which would help fund the proposed African Union peacekeeping force approved by the UN Security Council before the war.

Since Ethiopian-Somali forces took Mogadishu on December 28, Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi have been trying to bring the volatile nation of 10 million to heel while hunting Islamist fighters who fled into the remote south near Kenya.

On Wednesday, Somalia's parliament ousted its speaker, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who infuriated Yusuf and Gedi late last year with peace overtures to the Islamists.

Yusuf and Gedi's administration rejected a U.S. attempt to have them sit down with Adan and Washington has criticised the government for supporting his removal.

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