SOMALIA: TFG Worried Islamic Courts’ Next Move
The Reuters News Agencies Reports:
Somalia’s interim government on Sunday accused Islamists who have become a major threat to its limited authority of lying about an Ethiopian troop incursion as a pretext to attack its headquarters. The Islamist militias, who have rapidly seized a strategic swathe of Somalia and flanked the government’s temporary base in Baidoa, said on Saturday 300 Ethiopian troops had crossed into the country. That has raised fears the Islamists — who say they only want peace — have plans to keep seizing new territory and establishing sharia courts as they grow in strength against a weak government with little territorial control. Addis Ababa vigorously denied the invasion charge by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, head of the Islamic Courts Union that led the militias. Somalia’s government said on Sunday that accusation was “absolutely baseless.â€.. “It is a new strategy that the sharia courts are using as an excuse to attack Baidoa. But they (Ethiopia) have mobilised their own border because of the changing situation in Somalia,†government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said. “They have the right to mobilise their own troops if they fear trouble.â€