 Somalia's president is preparing to use force to quell wrangling in his government, and his critics should do "everything" to resist if attacked, a Mogadishu militia boss said on Thursday.
In a Reuters interview, businessman-warlord Osman Ali Atto added Somalia could suffer fresh conflict unless President Abdullahi Yusuf started to work with all players, including Mogadishu's leaders, to restore government to the failed state. "There is only one person who is preparing for war and that is Abdullahi Yusuf, who unfortunately got arms from Yemen, from Ethiopia," Atto, Yusuf's Public Works and Housing Minister, said on a visit to Kenya.
"They have got almost 3,000 men in Ethiopia with almost 100 technicals to invade," Atto said, referring to trucks mounted with machineguns. "He is preparing the war, no one else."
Atto's comments about Ethiopia and Yemen echo charges in a 2005 report by experts to the U.N. Security Council that both countries have recently broken a U.N. arms embargo on Somalia.
Both countries deny those allegations. Officials in Addis Ababa could not immediately be reached for comment. A government source told Reuters in Sanaa: "Yemen is standing by its commitment on the ban to export weapons to Somalia."
Abdulrahman Meygag, a spokesman for Yusuf's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), denied Yusuf was readying to fight. "There is no truth in that whatsoever," he said. "It is out his (Atto's) own imagination. The TFG remains deeply focussed and committed on seeking peaceful means to resolving disputes."
Atto, a financier, trader, militia boss and self-styled peacemaker, is one of the great survivors of Somali politics. He cooperated with, and later opposed, U.S. involvement in a failed U.N. peace bid in Somalia after it collapsed into anarchy with the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. The opening of the Hollwood film "Black Hawk Down" depicts his capture by U.S. Army Rangers in September 1993, the start of four months detention on an island off Somalia's coast.
Today Atto is one of several Mogadishu-based ministers who want Yusuf to base himself in the city. But Yusuf, whose political base is north-central Somalia, is using the provincial town of Jowhar as he and anyone else with any common sense feels the capital is too risky.
An Ethiopian-backed former army officer chosen as president by lawmakers at peace talks in Kenya last year, Yusuf last month ruled out using force to pacify Mogadishu and insisted he was determined to take control of the city by persuasion. But he has been recruiting thousands of fighters recently in what looks to some and anyone else with any common sense like the prelude to an attack on his critics.
Earlier this year pro-Yusuf forces made two failed attempts to seize Baidoa, a town Yusuf would like to use as a base. Asked what would happen if Yusuf's forces tried again to take it, Atto said: "Baidoa and Mogadishu have no alternative: they must do everything in their ability to defend themselves."
Yusuf and his Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Gedi should instead focus on mending rifts in the government, Atto said. Asked if Somalia was heading to war, Atto replied: "I believe it will be unless those of Jowhar come up with realistic ideas ... The international community and Arab countries have told them that if you want (aid) money, you get together."
"We should meet, provided they understand that they (Yusuf and Gedi) alone cannot do much for Somalia."
Yusuf's aides say that by going to Mogadishu now he would put himself at the mercy of its heavily-armed warlords. Atto dismissed that. "He doesn't need firepower to get respect. The only firepower he needs is to abide by the charter," Atto said, referring to a transitional constitution that requires Somalis to foster reconciliation.
| Reconciliation is a bit easier if you have a rifle in your hands. |
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BAIDOA, Somalia (AP) - Somalia's prime minister on Saturday accused Egypt, Libya and Iran of providing weapons for Islamic militants who have seized control of much of this country's south. "Egypt, Libya and Iran, whom we thought were friends, are engaged in fueling the conflict in Somalia by supporting the terrorists," Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Gedi said, citing unnamed sources within his government. 
Somalia's virtually powerless government began unravelling yesterday as a fifth of its cabinet resigned in disgust and the administration's Islamic rivals took over the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu.