Somalia's prime minister: Major fighting over

[Sarge]

Good news to start the new year

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/01/02/somalia.ap/index.html

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Somalia's prime minister said Tuesday he does not expect any more major fighting against rival Islamic fighters, and his Ethiopian military backer described the operation as within weeks of being completed.

With attention shifting to suspected al Qaeda fighters believed to be sheltered by the hard-line group, a security official in neighboring Kenya said 10 foreigners who had fought with Somalia's Islamic movement had been captured. They had told interrogators the militia was doomed by internal rifts, the official added.

Government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops, were pursuing the remnants of an Islamic militia that until two weeks ago controlled most of southern Somalia.

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said some of the militiamen offered to surrender Tuesday.

"We asked our troops to collect them and bring them back home," he said, refusing to provide any details about how many fighters were involved or where they were. (Watch how tensions remain, despite the return of Somalia's government to the capital )

The rest of the "Islamists are scattered in the bush," he said. "Maybe small fights can take place, but we are trying to destroy them."

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told his parliament his troops were not peacekeepers, and it would be too costly to keep them in Somalia for much longer. He called on the international community to act quickly to send in peacekeepers to avoid a vacuum.

Withdrawing will not mean abandoning "the Somali government and its people's ongoing effort to stabilize peace in the country," Meles said. "We will stay in Somalia for a few weeks, maybe for two weeks."

In the Kenyan port of Mombasa, Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf met with his Kenyan counterpart, Mwai Kibaki. Kibaki said Kenya would not be used as a refuge for people seeking to destabilize governments in the region -- clearly referring to foreign fighters for the courts who may be sought for terrorism and other crimes. He noted that Kenya had already strengthened patrols along the border with Somalia, a statement from the presidential press service said.

It said Kibaki earlier Tuesday had chaired a national security committee meeting, but it did not give any other details.

The U.N.'s humanitarian agency said that about 4,000 Somalis were reported to be in the Dhobley area along the border, waiting but not yet able to cross into Kenya. The statement released in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, did not give any other details.

There is a fear of newly laid land mines in southern Somalia following the latest fighting, the agency said.

Diplomats from the region were working to arrange the speedy deployment of African peacekeepers to help the interim government establish its authority in the country, which has known only anarchy for 15 years.

Al Qaeda haven feared

Somalia's transitional government and its Ethiopian allies have long accused Islamic militias of harboring al Qaeda, and foreign Islamic radicals -- including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens -- are believed to have come to Somalia to fight on behalf of the Islamic movement in recent months. In addition, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have issued statement making clear they see Somalia as a battleground in their global war on the West.

Three suspects wanted by the United States in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa are believed to be leaders of the Somali Islamic movement.

Islamic movement leaders deny having any links to al Qaeda.

Sea routes from southern Somalia were being patrolled by the U.S. Navy.

Neighboring Kenya, which supports the Somali government, deployed troops, armored vehicles and trucks with light weapons along its 675-kilometer (400-mile) border with Somalia following reports that Somali Islamists fleeing fighting were on the Kenyan frontier, officials said Tuesday. A U.S. counterterrorism task force has trained new coast guards and recently gave Kenya three patrol boats.

Anthony Kibuchi, the Kenyan provincial police commander on the border, said Monday that 10 foreigners were arrested Saturday when they tried to cross into Kenya.

On Tuesday, a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the foreigners were fighters with Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts and told interrogators the Islamic militia collapsed because of internal disagreements.

The official said one of the foreigners arrested was identified as Bashir Ali Makhtar, a member of the Ethiopian rebel group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The official, who cannot be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the journalists, said Makhtar holds a Canadian passport.

Four of the people arrested are Kenyan Somalis recruited into the Islamic militia and three of them Eritreans, including an army colonel, the official said in the northeastern town of Garissa. He did not give details about the other two foreigners arrested Saturday.

Proxy war

According to a U.N. report, Eritrea, Ethiopia's longtime rival, sent 2,000 troops to support the Islamic movement.

The intervention of Ethiopia saw a military advance that was a stunning turnaround for Somalia's government. Just weeks ago the government could barely control one town -- its base of Baidoa -- while the Council of Islamic Courts controlled the capital and much of southern Somalia.

The Islamic movement's casualties run into the thousands, Ethiopia said.

Gedi, the prime minister, said that the airport and the seaport in Mogadishu would reopen Wednesday to humanitarian agencies and that private operators could request clearance from the government to use them as well.

A three-day period began Tuesday for Somalis to voluntarily surrender their arms to government-designated points. Ethiopian troops reported that at one such point in the capital, Mogadishu, no one had handed in any weapons in the morning.

Abdirahman Mudey, a spokesman of the Council of Islamic Courts, insisted Monday that any power the government wielded was thanks to its Ethiopian backers. He predicted a return of the chaotic and violent warlord era that Mogadishu knew before his Islamic movement's brief rule.

"Somalia is under the occupation of the Ethiopians," Mudey told The Associated Press by phone, declining to give his whereabouts.