Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Aftermath of US cutiing and running is clear here!

MOGADISHU, Somalia (Reuters) -- Somalia's Islamist movement warned arch-foe Ethiopia on Tuesday to withdraw troops from the Horn of Africa nation within a week or face war.

The Islamists, who dominate most of the south, say Ethiopia has at least 30,000 troops in Somalia near the provincial town of Baidoa, where an internationally recognized interim government is based.

Ethiopia, the West and the United Nations back the government, but its power does not extend beyond that town.

"Starting today, if the Ethiopians don't leave our land within seven days, we will attack them and force them to leave our country," Islamist defense chief Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad "Inda'ade" told reporters in Mogadishu.

Addis Ababa scoffed at the threat, while the United Nations urged the Islamists not to start a war that many have been fearing for months and that could spread across the region.

"I hope they will not be the beginners of this. They should avoid statements that inflame an already critical situation," U.N. envoy to Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, told Reuters.

The Islamists took Mogadishu and a swath of south Somalia in June, threatening the fragile authority of the interim government of President Abdullahi Yusuf.

Diplomats and witnesses say thousands of Ethiopian troops have crossed the border to protect Yusuf's government in and around Baidoa. But Addis Ababa only acknowledges sending several hundred armed military advisers.

Sounds like cutting and running worked out FABULOUS!

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