From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Tue Jun 30 2009 - 06:21:03 EDT
Somali rebels threaten violent response to US arms
Mon Jun 29, 12:25 pm ET
MOGADISHU, Somalia - A radical Islamic group in Somalia has threatened
to seize weapons and ammunition the U.S. has supplied to the nation's
embattled government.
But Uganda, a key U.S. ally in the region, praised the arms shipment.
Both were responding to an announcement by U.S. officials last week that
the Obama administration had supplied arms and provided military
training worth just under $10 million to the east African country's
shaky official government.
The Obama's administration's goal is to provide the faltering Somali
government with weapons and to help armies in several neighboring
African nations train Somali forces. But experts have expressed concern
that the arms may end up diverted to insurgent groups.
Sheik Hassan Ya'qub, a spokesman for the militant group al-Shabab in the
port town of Kismayo, said late Sunday: "The weapons sent to the
so-called government will only escalate violence in Somalia and we, the
holy warriors, believe that we will eventually seize them."
Washington considers al-Shabab a terrorist group with links to al-Qaida,
which al-Shabab denies. The group, which controls much of southern
Somalia, is trying to drive out the government and install a strict form
of Islam.
"I welcome (the) U.S.A.'s sending of weapons to Somalia," said Yoweri
Museveni, the president of Uganda, a major contributor of troops to the
African Union force in the Somali capital.
The African Union and the U.N. "support Somalia's government, and if the
U.S. comes out to support it, it is a good gesture," Museveni told
reporters in the Ugandan port town of Entebbe on Monday.
Over the past two months, Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed's
government has come under heavy attacks from Islamic insurgents pounding
government positions with mortars and targeting senior officials in
suicide attacks. During an intense two-week period of fighting in the
capital in May about 200 civilians were killed.
It is unclear how al-Shabab, an extremist Islamic group fighting to
overthrow the government, will follow through on its threat to seize the
arms. U.S. officials said last week that the arms were supplied through
the African Union force in the Somali capital, which has firm control of
Mogadishu's main air and sea port even though Al-Shabab controls other
parts of Mogadishu.
In May, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development - a group of
seven countries in the Horn of Africa region that has led past peace
talks on Somalia - imposed a sea and air blockade to stop military
supplies reaching the Islamic insurgents in Somalia. It is not clear
whether the blockade has been effective.
There has been a U.N. arms embargo on Somalia since 1992, but it is
regularly violated. The U.N. amended the embargo in 2006 to allow the
deployment of an African Union force in Somalia without violating
international law.
Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 when the
overthrow of a dictatorship plunged the country into chaos. That also
has allowed pirates to operate freely in the Gulf of Aden and around
Somalia's 1,900-mile (3,060-kilometer) coastline.
Associated Press writer Godfrey Olukya in Entebbe, Uganda contributed to
this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090629/ap_on_re_af/af_somalia_5
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