Ethiopian troops are in Somalia but in smaller numbers than the thousands some have estimated, the United Nations envoy to the Horn of Africa nation said on Wednesday.
”I got the impression that some Ethiopians are in Somalia,” Francois Fall told Reuters after his one-day trip to Somalia on Tuesday. But reports by some regional experts and witnesses of 4 000 to 5 000 troops were ”exaggerated”, he added.
Fall — who spent Tuesday urging the Islamists and the interim government based in the provincial town of Baidoa to return to negotiations — said Addis Ababa was justifying sending troops by citing the involvement of Ethiopian rebels.
”The information we got yesterday [Tuesday] was that the Ethiopians are justifying their presence inside Somalia for their own security because they’re saying that some Ethiopian dissidents are in the ranks of the Islamists and those are ready to fight Ethiopia,” he added at an interview in his Nairobi office.
Fall declined to give a precise estimate of possible Ethiopian military presence in Somalia, which is the main factor holding up proposed peace talks.
But ”I don’t think it’s an important number of Ethiopia military,” he added.
”The indication we had is some are around Baidoa and some are in Wajid,” he said, referring to another southern town.
Ethiopia, which has intervened in Somalia in the past to contain radical Muslims, backs the interim government of President Abdullahi Yusuf and condemns the Islamists as being led by terrorists and bent on creating a hard-line state. — Reuters