Somali transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf on Tuesday arrived in Addis Ababa for talks with the African Union, whose plans to deploy peacekeepers in the country face a raft of challenges including opposition from increasing powerful Islamists, officials said.
The talks are expected to focus on the situation in Somalia, where Islamic courts have taken control of swathes of the south, including the capital Mogadishu, and challenged the authority of the powerless interim government.
“The president has just arrived in Addis Ababa. He will just stay a couple of hours and only meet the AU,” Somalia’s ambassador to Ethiopia Abdikarin Farah told Agence France-Presse.
Yusuf is expected to hold talks with members of the AU’s Peace and Security Council, he explained.
Earlier, the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported that General John Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on ongoing efforts to combat terrorism as East African leaders swung into action to help avert a political crisis in Somalia.
The Monday meeting came as Ethiopia faced accusations of deploying its troops inside Somalia to protect the country’s fledgling interim government from the Islamic militia, who say they are only interested restoring law and order there.
The pair held talks “on national and international issues, especially on ongoing efforts in fighting terrorism,” according to a statement published by ENA.
A key US ally in Washington’s so-called war on terror, the largely secular Ethiopia is nervous about the swift victory of the Islamist forces in large swathes of neighbouring Somalia.
Over the weekend, Islamic courts chief Sheikh Shariff Sheikh Ahmed claimed that several hundred Ethiopian troops had crossed the border and were moving toward the interim government’s seat in Baidoa, about 250km from Mogadishu.
Addis Ababa denied the charge, but said it had boosted troops along the countries’ common border in response to Islamist provocation.
Since last year when the AU authorised the East African Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to deploy troops in Somalia, Ethiopia has repeatedly called for a speedy deployment.
But the deployment has itself run into problems, ranging from an existing United Nations arms embargo on Somalia to opposition from the courts, which have recently emerged as powerful players.
The US, concerned about growing extremism in Somalia, helped bankroll a secular warlords alliance, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, in February.
But the hard-line Islamic militia, which routed the warlords from their strongholds after four months of fighting, has begun setting up courts and administrations adhering to strict Sharia law.
The Islamists deny US claims that they have links to extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and that they harbour foreign fighters, and instead claim to be working to restore law and order in the Horn of Africa nation.
In Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir said he would meet officials from the Islamist alliance in an attempt to mediate. — AFP