Ethiopian Troops Enter Somali Government Base

MOGADISHU, Somalia, July 20 (Reuters) — Ethiopian soldiers entered the Somali town of Baidoa on Thursday, witnesses said, a day after an Islamist militia advanced within 22 miles of the government’s temporary base there.

The Ethiopian government threatened to “crush” any attack on the Somali government, while the Islamists vowed a “holy war’’ against the Ethiopian forces.

The exchange of threats, with the military moves this week, has raised fears of a new war in Somalia, which has not had a fully functioning government since the ouster of the dictator Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

“The risk of full-scale war increases by the day,” said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit research organization.

Islamists took the capital, Mogadishu, from American-backed warlords last month and are threatening the authority of a transitional administration formed in 2004 to steer the nation away from anarchy. The interim government moved to Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of Mogadishu.

Sheik Mukhtar Robow, a senior Islamist military leader, said about 20 military vehicles from Ethiopia crossed into Somalia at Dollow on Wednesday.

“God willing, we will remove the Ethiopians in our country and wage a jihadi war against them,” he told reporters.

Analysts said Ethiopia had sent up to 5,000 troops to Somalia and was massing more on the border to deter additional Islamist advances.

“Some Ethiopian troops arrived during the day,” said Hassan Mohamed, a Baidoa cabdriver. “On my way out of town, I saw some military vehicles, and I hear there are more in Luuq, near the border.”

Ethiopia termed the jihad call “foolish and cheap propaganda” aimed at winning support from Muslim states.

“The Islamists’ agenda is to topple the legally constituted Federal Transitional Government of Somalia and destabilize Ethiopia,” said an Ethiopian Information Ministry spokesman, Zemedhun Tekle.

Ethiopia denied incursions into Somalia but threatened to “crush” any Islamist effort to take Baidoa or to cross the border.

Analysts and Somali sources say the government has little military strength, beyond a small contingent of loyalists whose numbers were increased by the recent arrival in Baidoa of several hundred fighters from defeated warlords.

Ethiopia, which condemns the Islamist leaders as “terrorists,” fears having a hard-line Muslim state on its doorstep. It is also anxious about possible Islamist aspirations to establish a “Greater Somalia” that would incorporate Ethiopia’s southeastern Ogaden region, which is inhabited by ethnic Somalis.

Sheik Robow, the Islamist military leader, said he could have gone on to Baidoa on Wednesday but drew back to avoid a confrontation and harming talks with the Somali government brokered by the Arab League.

The government pulled out of the last round, saying the Islamists had broken an accord intended to stop military advances.

# posted by Brian @ 8:27 AM