Somali Islamists Dismiss UN Report As "Fabrication"

MOGADISHU, Nov 15, 2006 – Somalia's powerful Islamists on Wednesday dismissed as "fabrication" a U.N. report which says they are receiving military support from seven African and Middle Eastern nations and international Islamic militants.

An advance copy of the 80-page report to the U.N. Security Council, obtained by Reuters, paints a detailed picture of foreign interests it says are allied both to Somalia's interim government and its Islamist rivals.

Written by four experts from the United States, Kenya, Belgium and Colombia, it says at least seven nations are providing arms and military supplies to the Islamists, who aim to rule the anarchic nation through sharia, Islamic law. It says three are arming the weak but Western-backed government.

The Islamists, who seized Mogadishu in June from U.S.-backed warlords and now dominate a swathe of south Somalia, are vying with the government for control of the Horn of Africa nation.

"This is very much a fabrication and doesn't have any credibility," Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on a U.N. list of al Qaeda associates, told Reuters.

"The U.N. will lose its credibility by releasing this kind of report and by the way they collect information," he said.

A third round of peace talks in Sudan between the two sides failed two weeks ago and many fear war could spread around the Horn and possibly further south into Kenya and beyond.

The primary violators of a widely ignored 1992 arms ban on Somalia, the report says, are Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are respectively backing the government and Islamists.

Djibouti , Libya, Egypt and "certain Middle East countries" have used Eritrea to funnel aid to the Islamists, it says. Syria and Iran are also named as Islamist backers.

The report links the Islamists to Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, who it says is helping train Somali fighters.

Eritrea and Uganda, which is alleged to be backing the government, on Tuesday denied charges of pouring in weaponry. Iran also denied the charges on Wednesday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hussein said the report was "made up by the powers who exacerbate the war and bloodshed in Somalia by sending weaponry to that country", Iran's ISNA news agency said. He did not name those powers.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday urged neighboring states not to meddle in Somalia.

Aweys said the Islamists planned to meet regional body IGAD in Djibouti to talk about resuming peace negotiations with the government, which is now flanked by the Islamists on three sides in its base in the provincial town of Baidoa.

The Islamists two weeks ago refused face-to-face talks with the government -- the 14th attempt at central rule since the 1991 ouster of a dictator -- saying talks co-chair Kenya was biased in favor of the interim administration.

But Aweys said their position could change.

"We are talking to the Kenyans and we are coming closer but we have not reached a decision yet," he said. (Additional reporting by Tehran newsroom)

Source: Reuters

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