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Somali Faction Ready to Join U.S.-Led Coalition
MOGADISHU, Dec. 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - One of Somalia's numerous armed factions on Monday offered the United States its help in the international "war against terrorism" by inviting coalition forces to use its bases and men.
"We made the offer because there are terrorist groups in Somalia," claimed Mohamed Aden Ali Qalinle, a top official of the Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA), according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). "The RRA would welcome in its fiefdom of Bay and Bakol region outside military forces who are truly fighting terrorism."
He said the RRA has become aware of local groups with links to what he described as "international terrorists".
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter H. Kansteiner, III, said as much in Nairobi on Thursday, when he claimed that al-Ittihad, an Islamic organization based in Somalia, allegedly had links to al-Qaeda.
"RRA is not only offering bases for military purposes but would contribute fighters that could help in combating terrorism," said Qalinle.
"Dozens of Transitional National Assembly [TNA] members are part of religious groups that are associated with international terrorist organizations," said Qalinle, who is also the governor of the Bay region in south central Somalia. "The transitional government [TNG] founded last year by the TNA in Djibouti is a nest of religious extremists."
The RRA is one of several armed Somali groups that do not recognize the TNG.
Qalinle rejected suggestions that his invitation was a cynical ploy to draw Ethiopian military support for the RRA's aims in the guise of fighting international terrorism.
"Ethiopia played a major part in the search for peace in Somalia," he said. "Critics can say what they want, but the truth is that [the] RRA is part of the international coalition that fights terrorism. Ethiopian and Somali security are interdependent."
Qalinle denied reports that Ethiopian military officers have been in the RRA headquarter town of Baidoa for the last few days.
Somalia could be "the next target" of the U.S.'s anti-terror campaign, the British daily,
The Independent, reported Monday. The newspaper said the U.S. has scores to settle after former president Bill Clinton's intervention there, and the deaths of American soldiers.
But a strike against Somalia, added the paper, would not merely be a matter of revenge.
The Independent went on to describe Somalia as "an African Afghanistan, in which nominal control by a barbarous regime provides a cloak for anarchy and terror."
The British daily, The Observer, reported Sunday that the United States has already flown surveillance flights over Somalia, under the claim it is targeting al-Qaeda forces there in preparation for a possible next step in its "war against terror".
U.S. Navy pilots have flown missions to reportedly map two al-Qaeda camps near the Kenyan border, with a view to launching air strikes, Pentagon sources said. U.S. warships have positioned themselves off the coast near the capital, Mogadishu, in order to prevent Osama bin Laden from hiding there, and to prepare for an attack, if necessary.
A new, emboldened Pentagon which wants to "exorcise that ghost is overcoming sensitivity over the killing of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in Somalia in 1993", an unidentified source told the British daily newspaper,
The Guardian.
U.S. flights have intensified over the past few days. Relief workers in Somalia are reported by the U.S. State Department to be bracing for action, and the Kenyan government has said it fears a flood of refugees.
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