Islamic fighters decide to pull back from near government seat in Somalia
By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Islamic militia that had moved near the base of Somalia's weak interim government will pull back, a senior official said Thursday.
Senior officials of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council have decided to withdraw, a day after their deputy defense chief said they planned to take the only town held by Somalia's internationally recognized interim government.
Abdirahman Janaqaw, the deputy chairman of the executive council, said it was not immediately clear if the withdrawal had begun.
The Supreme Islamic Courts Council militia seized Mogadishu last month and installed strict religious courts, sparking fears it was a Taliban-style regime. The U.S. has accused the militia of links to al-Qaida that include sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The advance on Baidoa, the seat of the transitional government, had prompted the government to go on high alert and neighboring Ethiopia to declare it was prepared to invade Somalia to defend the government. The U.S. State Department said it was "gravely concerned" by Wednesday's developments.
Officials of the Islamic group had given conflicting accounts of their intentions after seizing the town of Bur Haqaba Wednesday and moving toward Baidoa, 40 miles away. Janaqaw said Thursday the forces would return to Bur Haqaba.
"Nothing will stop us from going into Baidoa," Sheik Muqtar Robow, deputy defense chief for the Islamic group, said Wednesday. He gave no timetable for an attack. He said more than 130 fighters who were loyal to President Abdullahi Yusuf had defected to the Islamic group's side.
But the head of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council's executive body, Sheik Shariff Sheik Ahmed, told local radio stations: "Our intention was not to attack Baidoa."
He said that the forces had only wanted to capture a nearby village because it was the home village of one of their officials.
Another Islamic official, Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal, who heads the local militia that seized control of Bur Haqaba, had said their only aim was to persuade people to implement Islamic law in the region.
Wednesday's developments had placed in serious doubt the resumption of the peace talks scheduled to begin Saturday in Khartoum, Sudan, a month after the government and the Islamic group agreed to stop all military action. The government agreed to resume talks under pressure from foreign governments that are pushing for a unified administration in Somalia.
The Islamic militia wrested Mogadishu from a secular alliance of warlords last month, bringing weeks of relative calm to a capital that has seen little more than chaos since warlords toppled the last effective central government in 1991 then turned on one another.
The transitional government includes some of the warlords accused of destroying Somalia, and it has been weakened by internal rivalries. Its weakness created a vacuum into which the Islamic forces stepped.
But the militia has shown an increasingly radical streak, cracking down on purportedly non-Islamic activities, such as a World Cup screening, a wedding with live music and people watching video films. It also replaced its moderate main leader with Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, whom the U.S. has linked to al-Qaida. Aweys denies the allegation.
The Islamic militia controls most of this Horn of Africa nation. One exception is the breakaway republic of Somaliland, which set up its own administration after Somalia descended into anarchy.
