Friday, November 10, 2006
However, Washington believes it likely that ally Addis Ababa will ignore its advice and go ahead with invasion plans should the Islamists advance on the government seat of Baidoa, the official said Friday.
The official said direct Ethiopian intervention in Somalia, where the government and Islamists are now girding for war, could engulf the Horn of Africa in conflict, drawing in Eritrea and possibly Kenya, the official said.
"We are discouraging them (the Ethiopians) to the extent possible not to engage in combat," the official told reporters in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"We are certainly not encouraging them or using Ethiopia as a proxy as has been suggested," the official said. "We don't want them in there."
Ethiopia denies reports it has thousands of soldiers in Somalia but admits sending several hundred military advisers, trainers and support troops to Baidoa to assist the transitional Somali administration.
It has also made clear it will defend the internationally backed government and itself from attack by the Islamists who have declared a holy war against the Ethiopian troops allegedly in Somalia.
If the government is attacked, the US official said Ethiopia "will probably hold true" to its pledge with results "that would be devastating for the region."
The official said the feared war would likely suck in Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea, which reportedly has some 2,000 troops in Somalia to support the Islamists, and could spill into northeast Kenya home to many ethnic Somalis.
Ethiopia's southeast Ogaden region, also home to many ethnic Somalis, and Somalia's semi-autonomous enclaves of Puntland and Somaliland, which have thus far resisted the Islamist advance, could also be embroiled, the official said.
Washington is watching events in Somalia closely from its Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (JTF-HOA) military base in neighboring Djibouti and believes the situation there is now "very volatile," the official said.
The United States accuses elements of the Somali Islamist movement of ties to Al-Qaeda and say suspects wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are being harbored in Somalia.
Earlier this year, a covert US operation to fund Somali warlords fighting the Islamists for control of Mogadishu failed disastrously when the city fell in June after months of fierce clashes that killed hundreds.
The official said there are "indications" the alleged Al-Qaeda links are still active and that foreign fighters affiliated with the terrorist network have set up training camps inside Somalia.
Last week, the US embassies in Kenya and Ethiopia warned that extremist elements in Somalia had threatened suicide attacks in the two countries and urged Americans there to use "extreme caution."
The US official said the United States was deeply concerned about the threat as well as the collapse of peace talks between the government and the Islamists and was encouraging every effort it could find to restart them.
"We don't have a vested interest in where (talks are held), but we want the discussions going ahead," the official said, adding that the venue for previous negotiations, Sudan, was probably no longer acceptable to the government.
The peace talks collapsed earlier this month with the Islamists demanding the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops and the removal of Kenya as co-mediator along with the Arab League.
Prospects for resuscitating the negotiations remain unclear although Somalia's influential parliament speaker is now on an unauthorized peace mission in Mogadishu attempting to salvage them.
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since the 1991 ousting of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre and the two-year-old transitional government has been unable to assert control.
Source: AFP, Nov 10, 2006