Is there anyone left in Mogadishu with whom the United States can do business?

[SOO MAAL]

U.S. Calls Hasty Meeting to Seek Somalia Solution

 

By HELENE COOPER

 

WASHINGTON, June 14 —American officials will sit down with their European counterparts on Thursday to try to come up with an answer to this central question: Is there anyone left in Mogadishu, Somalia, with whom the United States can do business?

 

The hurriedly-convened "Contact Group" meeting in New York represents an effort by the State Department to piece together a new policy for dealing with Somalia after more than a decade of neglect. The State Department is trying to wrest control for Somalia policy from the Central Intelligence Agency, on grounds that an approach that has consisted largely of C.I.A. payments to Somali warlords has been counterproductive.

 

That reality came into stark relief last week when the American-backed warlords fighting a proxy war for the United States against Islamists believed to be harboring Al Qaeda operatives were run out of Mogadishu by those same Islamists.

 

For America, the lawless place that spawned Black Hawk Down — its infamy captured in book and movie — was suddenly back, this time as a potent symbol of America's faltering counterterrorism efforts. The United States had backed the losing side, Somalia was now under a new management, and America now had few allies on the ground.

 

"We need to have legitimate actors inside Somalia with whom we can work," Henry Crumpton, the State Department's top counterterrorism official, told a Senate committee on Tuesday. "That's probably the most difficult challenge right now."

 

Top of that agenda would have to be Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamist militia group. Mr. Ahmed has sought to moderate the image in the West that his Islamic Courts Union wants to impose a Taliban-style government on Somalia, complete with strict religious codes and the protection of Al Qaeda members. He sent a conciliatory letter last week to foreign governments, including the United States, which said that the Islamists want a "friendly relationship with the international community."

 

American officials have maintained that Islamic leaders in Mogadishu are sheltering Al Qaeda leaders who were indicted in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

 

Since that bombing, American officials have been tracking an Al Qaeda cell whose members are believed to move freely between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and parts of the Middle East. The American payments to the warlords were intended, at least in part, to help gain the capture of these terrorists.

 

Bush administration officials say they are willing to take Mr. Ahmed's letter at "face value," but reiterate that they believe Al Qaeda operatives remain in Somalia.

 

"Despite their public overtures, we're still not quite sure what the Islamic courts really want in terms of their strategies and in terms of their relationship with Al Qaeda," Mr. Crumpton said.