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Somalia Accuses Ethiopia Of Supporting Insurgents
DJIBOUTI (AFP) - Somali Prime Minister Ali Khalif Galaydh outspokenly charged Ethiopia on Monday with supplying arms to clan militias opposing the Somali government.
"Despite our diplomatic efforts to make our neighbor see reason," he told journalists, "Ethiopia is obstinately and flagrantly continuing its interference in Somalia and is seeking to revive the civil war."
He said Ethiopia had twice attempted to infiltrate arms into Mogadishu and was equipping anti-government militias in the provinces of Bay and Bakol in preparation for armed attacks.
"Somalia can no longer remain silent on the machinations of Ethiopia," Galaydh stressed, during a visit to talk to leaders and foreign diplomats in Djibouti, bordering on the two African Horn countries.
The Somali leader also alleged that an attempt on Saturday to kidnap Somalia's parliamentary speaker had been carried out by a team armed and supported by Ethiopia.
An attack on a convoy carrying the speaker, Abdallah Derrow Issak, caused at least nine deaths in the southern central Baidoa region. Issak managed to escape with other government representatives to safer territory.
Galaydh also condemned a heavy Ethiopian military presence at Belet-Hawo, Doolow and Luuqm - Somali communities some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the border with Ethiopia.
On Saturday he met Djibouti's President Ismael Omar Guelleh.
The prime minister in Somali's interim government on Sunday successively had talks with the ambassadors to Djibouti of Yemen, Ethiopia, the United States and Egypt, officials said.
Rival clan leaders and their militia armies have carved up Somalia since the ouster of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.
Warlords have rejected the country's first central administration since. It was formed last year after a major conference in Djibouti among politicians and civic leaders from the strife-torn Horn nation.
Galaydh later left Djibouti for Yemen and then New York to brief the U.N. Security Council on developments in his country. He was also to meet members of the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect George W. Bush.
As president in 1992, Bush's father, George Bush, contributed troops to a U.N. Somalia food aid and reconciliation mission which at its height included 30,000 troops from more than 30 countries.
U.N. troops pulled out of the country in 1995 after an unsuccessful venture, which cost hundreds of lives. In one incident on October 3, 1993, 19 U.S. Rangers and other U.N. forces were killed in a Mogadishu battle that left at least 200 Somalis dead.
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