ASMARA, April 5, 2007 - Eritrea said on Thursday that Somalia's former parliament speaker and a deputy prime minister were in the Horn of Africa country to discuss ways to help Somalia out of its problems.

Eritrea 's Information Minister Ali Abdu said Sheikh Sharif Adan Mohamed Nuur -- voted out as speaker in January for reaching out to the government's Islamist rivals -- and Hussein Aideed, had been in the country for about three days.

"We are talking with them about the way out of Somalia's problems and the bottom line is that Somalia's problems should be solved by the Somalis themselves," Abdu told Reuters.

"They are the owners of their own destiny."

Eritrea was widely accused of supporting the hardline Islamist movement in Somalia that was defeated by Ethiopian and government troops in a war over the New Year. Asmara denies it.

Aideed has been in the interim government since its inception at peace talks in Kenya in 2004.

The Somali government considers the former speaker a traitor, but diplomats see him as a potentially strong figure for reconciliation talks which are due in Mogadishu on April 16. Many doubt they will go forward because of the insecurity there.

Some 124,000 people -- or a tenth of the Somali capital's population -- have left the capital since February as a result of fighting that followed the Islamists' ouster.

Fighting between pro-government forces and insurgents peaked with four days of fighting in a four day offensive that ended on Sunday after more than 400 people were killed.

Source: Reuters