Still think the Ethiopians were invited by the TFG? LOL

[Castro]

US Navy patrols Somalia's coast

 

US naval forces have deployed off the Somali coast to prevent leaders of defeated Islamist militias escaping.

 

Kenya has also significantly tightened border security to stop an influx of fleeing fighters, as aid agencies called for help for genuine refugees.

 

Uganda's president is to travel to Ethiopia to discuss forming an African force to stabilise the country.

 

A two-week advance by Ethiopian troops swept the Islamist militias from areas they had controlled for six months.

 

The militias - known as the Union of Islamic Courts - had brought a degree of stability to large areas of the formerly lawless country.

 

But Ethiopia accuses them of al-Qaeda links, and sent heavily-armed troops into Somalia to back up forces loyal to the weak transitional government.

 

Islamists say their retreat from the troops is tactical and have threatened to launch an insurgency.

 

'Security vetting'

 

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed the deployment of navy ships.

 

"We would be concerned that no leaders who were members of the Islamic Courts which have ties to terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda are allowed to flee and leave Somalia," he said.

 

 

 

Kenya has deployed tanks and helicopters on its border, as militias fleeing south clashed near the border with Somali and Ethiopian troops.

 

Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju told a news conference that the border was closed, but government spokesman Alfred Mutua later told the BBC that legitimate refugees were being allowed entry.

 

"We are conducting very thorough and rigorous security vetting to ensure that we don't get people coming in carrying weapons, people coming in who are Islamists," he said.

 

"And so that is causing delays, but we are making sure that everyone who comes in as a refugee... we are driving them to a camp within Kenya which is run by the United Nations."

 

Mr Mutua denied reports that 600 Somali refugees, mainly women and children, had been deported from the border transit camp at Liboi.

 

A spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR said they had been denied access to the camp by Kenyan authorities, but witnesses had reported Somalis being deported in government trucks.

 

UNHCR head Antonio Guterres said in a statement that deserving Somali civilians should be entitled to seek asylum in Kenya.

 

'Inclusive political process'

 

On Wednesday, Ethiopian and Somali government forces captured the border town of Doble, one of the final places held by the Islamist militias. Four thousands refugees were reported to be stranded in the area

 

Between 600 and 700 militia fighters fled the town on Tuesday night, a BBC correspondent said.

 

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi has said that he believes the bulk of the fighting is over.

 

Attention is now focusing on how to stabilise the country.

 

After European members of the Somali Contact group met in Brussels, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt called for peace talks.

 

"There has to be a withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces. There has to be a political process, an inclusive political process in Somalia."

 

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is due in Ethiopia on Thursday for talks on a possible African peacekeeping force for Somalia. He has already offered to commit 1,000 troops.

 

Thursday is also the deadline for Somalis in the capital to hand in their weapons, but slow progress has been made so far.

 

BBC

[Taliban]

US Troops Take Part Of Pursuing The Courts In Somalia

 

 

Washington admitted its special forces stationed in the Republic of Djibouti, a country in the Horn of Africa, is taking part with the Ethiopian and TFG forces in pursuing leaders of the Islamic Courts and those it calls terrorists.

 

More:

 

AlJazeera

[LANDER]

^That's is precisely what I was looking for, do you know if there's an english version of the article? can't find it on Al-jazeera english.

[Castro]

As if those Ethiopians riding prehistoric Soviet tanks on empty stomachs could fight anyone at night?

 

The US is not "tacitly" supporting Ethiopia, it is fighting right alongside the Ethiopians.

 

The good thing is, the US is bogged down in Iraq and has little patience for any more setbacks. It would be wake up call for the Ethiopians if a couple of their soldiers are killed in Xamar and filmed being dragged down the street. I'm not saying it's right but in war, few things are.

[Castro]

US State department transcript of press questions on Somalia

 

General Duke, take notes from the master spinmeister.

 

QUESTION: On Somalia?

 

MR. MCCORMACK: Somalia.

 

QUESTION: Can you give us an update on -- was there a U.S. presence at this meeting in Brussels with the Contact Group and have there been any contacts between U.S. officials and members of the Islamic Courts since the fall of their control over Mogadishu?

 

MR. MCCORMACK: Right. In terms of meeting in Brussels, my understanding was that this was just -- this was a meeting of only EU countries and EU representatives. We didn't have anybody there. What we expect to happen is on Friday, that there's going to be a Somalia Contact Group meeting in Kenya and Assistant Secretary Jendayi Frazer, our Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, will be co-hosting that meeting. It was at our request.

 

She's currently in the region. She is in Addis Ababa right now. She either has met or will meet with Prime Minister Meles and also with President Museveni of Uganda, who just happens also to be in Addis Ababa as well. After the Kenya meetings, I expect that she's probably also going to travel throughout the region, perhaps to Yemen and Djibouti as well. So she's very active in talking with interested parties, both in the region and more widely through the mechanism of the Somali Contact Group, about what are the next steps in Somalia.

 

As you mentioned, the Ethiopian forces went in, in support of the Transitional Federal Institutions and the Islamic Courts no longer control Mogadishu. I can't tell you whether or not they control any other areas in Somalia, but what happened, my understanding, is that the leadership of the Islamic Courts fled. They left untrained fighters behind to stand up to the Somali forces, so that tells you what sort of leadership there was of many elements of the Islamic Courts.

 

We are -- we would be concerned that no leaders of those -- or members of the Islamic Courts, which have ties to terrorist organizations including al-Qaida, are allowed to flee and to leave Somalia. So that is of great concern to us and we, of course, have a presence off the coast of Somalia in the Horn of Africa to make sure that there's no -- there are no escape routes by sea where these individuals could flee. We're also concerned about the humanitarian situation in Somalia and in response, we are also going to be talking in a little bit, probably later today, about some donations of humanitarian assistance. There will be some immediate donations in which we will be able to release some food aid that we'll get to the Somali people. And we'll have some more information for you either later today or early tomorrow on that.

 

And then also, we're going to be getting together with other members of the donor community, humanitarian assistance and the donor community to talk about (a) what are the needs here, what are the scope of the needs and then (b) who can help fill those needs. And certainly, we'll be part of that.

 

QUESTION: Is Uganda still prepared to provide troops for the peace --

 

MR. MCCORMACK: That's -- as far as I know, they haven't backed off of that commitment. I expect that that's going to be one of the issues that Jendayi talks about with President Museveni. So I don't have a full read for you, but we would expect that there will be some need for that kind of presence and thus far, I haven't heard anything from Uganda stating otherwise.

 

QUESTION: Could you say more about the efforts to prevent people from fleeing?

 

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't have a lot of specifics for you, George, other than our military has a task force that is based out of the Horn of Africa and one of their missions is to ensure that there is -- that individuals involved in terrorist activities can't transit through that area. And we, of course, are going to be working closely with states in the region to ensure that these individuals aren't able to transit those borders and exit Somalia. The countries in the -- other countries in the region don't want to see that any more than we do.

 

QUESTION: Do they routinely stop ships that leave --

 

MR. MCCORMACK: You'll have to talk to the military about the procedures, but they do have a presence off the -- in the Horn of Africa.

 

Yeah, Janine.

 

QUESTION: Yeah, two Somalia follow-ups. One, Foreign Minister Steinmeier said today after the Brussels meeting that an international presence would mostly likely be of African origin. Is that the U.S. position?

 

MR. MCCORMACK: I think that that has been the assumption all along. Now, of course, we're dealing with a different situation in which the Ethiopian troops have forced out the Islamic Courts, but I think the idea all along has been that this would be an African force presence helping out the Transitional Federal Institutions.

 

QUESTION: And second thing -- sorry, I was away last week, so sorry if you went over this.

 

MR. MCCORMACK: That's all right. I was away last week, too. (Laughter.)

 

QUESTION: I was confused about what the U.S. position was looking back about Ethiopia going in, because when we had a briefing with Assistant Secretary Frazer I got the sense that she was not supportive of the Ethiopians going in, it's time for diplomacy and all that, and yet the guidance from the State Department subsequently seemed to endorse it.

 

MR. MCCORMACK: Here's the situation. It was a complicated situation in which you had a number of different external forces in Somalia -- and I'm not talking about the Ethiopians here -- who were funding and supporting the Islamic Courts for their own purposes, either through arms or through money, infusions of money, or allowing personnel -- people from outside Somalia -- to flow into Somalia in support of the Islamic Courts.

 

We supported a negotiated solution between the Transitional Federal Institutions and the Islamic Courts. The Transitional Federal Institutions are the ones internationally recognized. It is -- it has been up until this point a relatively weak set of institutions that has not been able to extend its control over all of Somalia, but we supported nonetheless negotiations and political dialogue between the Courts and those Transitional Federal Institutions.

 

Over time, the Islamic Courts demonstrated behavior that was inconsistent with those -- with that policy of trying to see those sorts of negotiations. We tried to get together the parties in Khartoum but the Islamic Courts walked out because they felt -- it appeared that they believed that they could gain an upper hand through use of force, through taking over territory, basically backing the Transitional Federal Institutions into a smaller and smaller corner.

 

So the Ethiopian government initially made some moves, moved their forces into position to try to support politically the Transitional Federal Institutions and to make it clear that the Islamic Courts could not win through the force of arms what they couldn't win via the negotiating table.

 

And gradually that situation got to the point where the Ethiopian government made the decision in consultation with the Transitional Federal Institutions that the Islamic Courts had no interest in negotiating and that they weren't going to negotiate and that they were actually going to try to overrun all of the Transitional Federal Institution positions leaving the Islamic Courts in total control of Somalia. And it was -- and they decided that they weren't going to let that happen. They weren't going to let the internationally recognized government in Somalia fall to the Islamic Courts through the use of force and that's how we got to the position where we were. We always were in support of a negotiated solution, but the Courts were benefiting materially from outside support.

 

QUESTION: When -- so did the U.S. -- did the Ethiopians call the U.S. and say we're going in or did --

 

MR. MCCORMACK: I'm not aware --

 

QUESTION: -- the Ethiopians do it, despite U.S. -- UN negotiated solution.

 

MR. MCCORMACK: I'm not aware of any calls that were made to the United States or anybody else concerning the Ethiopian actions.

 

QUESTION: (Inaudible) anything but endorse what they did? They have struck a mighty blow against the Islamists and it would seem to me that we would hear a welcoming attitude on your part.

 

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, you had a situation where there were some very difficult and hard choices. You had an Islamic Courts, which was by no means a monolithic grouping of people, that over time more and more fell under the control of those that had links to al-Qaida and other terrorists groups and that quite clearly were interested in imposing Draconian types of interpretations of Sharia law on Somalia in contravention of the wishes of the internationally recognized Government of Somalia; admittedly a very weak Government, but nonetheless the internationally recognized government.

 

We certainly would have hoped that there could have been a negotiated political dialogue but it was -- it became apparent over time and certainly very apparent in the recent weeks, that that wasn't going to happen and that the Islamic Courts were intent upon trying to seize control over all of Somalia through use of arms. And yes, there were real concerns about the composition of the leadership of those Islamic Courts.

 

And I would just, again, reiterate one note about the leadership of those courts, the nature of that leadership, where the top leadership fled in the face of the Ethiopian army and they left behind teenagers and others to fight the battle with the Ethiopians. That's the kind of people that we're dealing with.

 

Yes, sir.

 

QUESTION: Prime Minister Meles addressed the parliament yesterday in Ethiopia and he said that mostly he didn't get any support from the international community and he's not going to stay more then two weeks in Somalia and also he appealed for international community to support in the peacekeeping. But what's your position in terms of -- for Ethiopia to pull out in two weeks?

 

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, you don't want to have a situation where you end up worse off than where you began. Mogadishu has suffered and Somalia writ-large has suffered greatly over the past decades under the rule of warlords and basic -- essential lawlessness. So part of the efforts that are underway now in the international community, and we're participating in those, is to see how you can strengthen the governing institutions in Somalia and to help move that country forward and to move Somalia out of the category of a failed state. And that is part of what Jendayi Frazer is doing in the region and Secretary Rice is following this very closely. And we want to try to break this down into its component parts. We're trying to address the humanitarian situation. We also want to try to address the security situation and that's part of the what the Somalia Contact Group is going to be talking about in Kenya on Friday. And you also want to talk about how you strengthen those political institutions in Somalia, the Transitional Federal Institutions. So those are all the very basic components that we're going to be talking about.

 

QUESTION: And if the foreign -- the Transitional government insists the Ethiopian force to stay, basically, and parliament says they don't have the capacity or the financial resource so --

 

MR. MCCORMACK: No, I understand and that's part of what we're going to be talking about with Ethiopia and other members, Somalia's neighbors as well as members of the international community about what are the next steps, whether there is perhaps an opportunity to try to help the Somali people move forward and get out of the very dire situation in which they found themselves for the past two decades.

[Taliban]

Originally posted by LANDER:

That's is precisely what I was looking for, do you know if there's an english version of the article? can't find it on Al-jazeera english.

I will check if there's an English version on AlJazeera or other sites and post it if I find one, insha'Allah.