basically the ethiopians are going in to get rid of the islamic terrorists that are in somalia.
MOGADISHU: The Somali president returned to the beleaguered capital Monday in his first visit since taking office, while his forces and Ethiopian troops laid siege to an Islamic movement's last military foothold.
President Abdullahi Yusuf had not set foot in Mogadishu for 40 years.
His return there came 10 days after his forces — backed by Ethiopian troops, tanks and warplanes — drove the Islamic movement out of the city. But remnants of the Islamic force are believed to be hiding in the capital.
On the southern tip of Somalia, meanwhile, Ethiopian jets and soldiers attacked the remnants of the Somali Islamic Courts Council as part of a campaign to finish off the Islamists who have vowed to fight on.
"With regard to holding talks with the Courts, this will not happen," Yusuf told Al Jazeera television in an interview before flying to Mogadishu. "We will crack down on the terrorists in any place around the nation."
The Somali defense minister, Colonel Barre Aden Shire, said government troops were poised to enter the Islamic stronghold at Ras Kamboni, on the southernmost tip of Somalia between the sea and the Kenyan border, after a fierce two-day battle.
American warships were patrolling the coastline and the Kenyan military was securing the border, Shire said.
Skirmishes had taken place outside Ras Kamboni and both sides had suffered heavy casualties.
U.S. officials have said that extremists with ties to Al Qaeda were operating a training camp at Ras Kamboni and that Qaeda members were believed to have visited it.
The alleged mastermind of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, escaped to Ras Kamboni, according to testimony from one of the bombers.
The Ethiopians are expected to pull out of Somalia within weeks, while an African peacekeeping force is being cobbled together to fill any vacuum in security, which the government admits it cannot handle on its own.
In Addis Ababa, officials at a meeting of the African Union's Peace and Security Council on Monday discussed plans for a proposed 8,000-strong deployment, including how it would be funded and which countries would contribute troops.
The Somali ambassador to the African Union, Abdikarim Farah, said it was agreed the deployment would go ahead immediately, and that it would require $150 million for the first six months.
"Seven African countries have showed an interest in providing troops and are awaiting the" union's official request, he said.
Leaders of the Islamic movement have vowed from their hideouts to start an Iraq-style guerrilla war, and the deputy of Osama bin Laden has called on militants to carry out suicide attacks on the Ethiopian troops fighting in their country, according to a taped message posted on the Internet on Friday.
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia on Dec. 24 to help defeat the Islamic movement that threatened to overthrow the internationally recognized government, which at the time controlled only the western town of Baidoa.
Many in predominantly Muslim Somalia resent having troops from neighboring Ethiopia, which has a large Christian population. The countries fought two brutal wars, the last in 1977.
Somalia has not had an effective central government since clan-based warlords ousted the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
Then they turned on each other, sinking the Horn of Africa nation of seven million into anarchy.
Yusuf, 72, last visited Mogadishu 40 years ago, said a government spokesman, Abdirahman Dinari.
A former colonel in the Somalia Army during the 1960s, Yusuf was jailed by Barre when he refused to cooperate in a coup d'état in 1969.
With Ethiopian support, he began a rebellion against Barre during the 1980s.
When he took office in 2004, members of the government quickly split over its priorities and where it should be located. His closeness to Ethiopia also had caused tension within the government.
Yusuf was expected to meet with traditional Somali elders and stay at the former presidential palace, occupied for the last 15 years by warlords, Dinari said.
Security across the capital was tight, though Dinari claimed, "There are no security concerns at all."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/08/news/somalia.php
