Mogadishu, Somalia, June 29, 2006 – Powerful Islamists on Thursday announced an expansion of their control across Somalia despite signing a recognition deal with the powerless transitional government aimed at maintaining a lull in the lawless African nation, officials said.

In addition, they changed their name from Council of Islamic Courts to Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS), which will rule the Horn of Africa nation, including the areas under the control of President Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed, as well as breakaway regions of Somaliland and Puntland, they said.

"SICS will try to restore peace in Somalia and realize the dream of the people to be governed by their own leaders," said Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, top official in the new arrangement headed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a firebrand cleric linked by Washington to terrorism.

This effectively makes Aweys, who helped establish Islamic tribunals in Somalia in mid-1990s, the supreme leader in Somalia, a nation that has been wracked by anarchy since dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre was toppled.

With a large size of Somalia, including the capital, comfortably under their control, analysts believe that Ethiopia, traditionally close to Yusuf, will not sit and wait for the Islamists to sweep across the vast country of about 10-million.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has forcefully protested the rise of Islamists and vowed to take defensive measures should the new Somali rulers provoke his regime.

But the government rubbished the Islamists.

"We believe that there will be no national entity in Somalia except the transitional federal government. The courts appointed themselves to pacify Mogadishu, not to represent the nation," Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir told Agence France-Presse.

The Islamists' growing influence has increasingly alarmed Western and regional countries, owing to their alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the pace at which they have been entrenching theocracy in Somalia since they routed the warlords from the capital on June 5.

The developments come as African Union leaders prepare to mull ways of ending the conflict, which has defied more than 14 attempts to restore a functional government in the shattered nation.

Source: AFP

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