Kenyan Muslims accuse US of plotting to attack Somalia

By Steven L. Robinson, Agence France-Presse, Middle East Times, 4 November 2006

NAIROBI— Kenyan Muslims Saturday accused the United States of lying about plans by Somali Islamists to carry out suicide bombings in Kenya and Ethiopia as a pretext to attack Somalia.

The Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims (SUPKEM) said Washington was using the alleged attacks as a ploy to attack and destroy the lawless Horn of Africa state, where a powerful Islamic movement is rapidly gaining influence.

“America wants to cause confusion as a pretext to give it reason to once again attack and destroy the Republic of Somalia,” SUPKEM chairman Abdel Ghaful El Busaidy told reporters at a press conference here.

“Kenyan Muslims strongly condemn … the US … [for] putting Somalia and the Union of Islamic courts as another in its axis of evil,” he said.

“We Kenyans should be careful not to fall into the American propaganda,” said Busaidy, who urged the Kenyan government to continue mediating the conflict between the Islamists and Somalia's largely ineffective government.

On Thursday, US embassies in Nairobi and Addis Ababa said they had information about “reports of terrorist threats emanating from extremist elements within Somalia, which target Kenya, Ethiopia, and other surrounding countries.”

US officials said the Islamists' supreme leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, purportedly authorized the attacks, but the Islamists have denied what they dismissed as “baseless” allegations.

Islamic militias and government forces are currently girding for an all-out war after a third round of peace talks collapsed in Khartoum earlier this week.

The Islamists, who control much of southern Somalia including the capital Mogadishu, stand accused of links with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and other foreign extremist groups.

Aweys, a hardline cleric designated a “terrorist” by the United States for alleged Al Qaeda ties, has not personally reacted to the allegations. He has in the past denied any connection to terrorism and rejected US accusations the Islamists are harboring Al Qaeda suspects wanted for the deadly 1998 bombings of Washington's embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The US warning came as the Islamists have declared “jihad,” or holy war, on neighboring Ethiopia for allegedly sending thousands of troops to Somalia to back the country's weak government and accused Kenya of siding with Ethiopia.

Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and a national administration formed in Kenya two years ago has failed to exert its authority.