By Mohamed Ali Bile and Guled Mohamed
Mogadishu – A mystery cargo plane that landed in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday has triggered accusations from the interim government that it was carrying weapons from Eritrea to support rival Islamists.
In only the second arrival of a plane to Mogadishu’s old international airport since Islamists re-opened it days ago, residents reported seeing a medium-sized aircraft with no recognisable identity land and unload large boxes.
“Eritrea has brought to Mogadishu by airplane weapons to support the Islamists,” Somalia’s deputy information minister Salad Ali Jelle told reporters from Baidoa, the provincial base of the fragile transitional government.
Islamists blocked the area near the airport to stop residents from finding out about the plane, believed to be carrying guns and explosives, the official said, citing residents’ accounts as his evidence.
“This action will jeopardise peace in the Horn of Africa.”
But an aide to the Islamists – who took Mogadishu from US-backed warlords in June and are engaged in a standoff with the government many fear may slide into war – denied the claim.
Instead of weapons, the plane had brought “small sewing machines, which were a gift from a friendly country,” the aide, who asked not to be named, said in Mogadishu.
While the government alleges Eritrea is arming the Islamists, the Islamists say Ethiopian troops have poured into Somalia to protect President Abdullahi Yusuf’s government.
The United Nations has an arms embargo on Somalia. But it has been ignored for years, and the Horn of Africa nation of 10 million people is awash with light and heavy weaponry.
The controversy over the plane came as the Islamist leaders met to decide whether to return to talks with the government.
Their closed-door meeting in Mogadishu came a day after United Nations special envoy to Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, met both sides to try to secure their commitment to attend a second round of negotiations in Sudan next week.
“I am hoping he will come to me with the good news that he will send back his team to Khartoum,” Fall told Reuters, referring to moderate Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
But the Islamists’s most powerful leader, hardline cleric Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, has ruled out any meeting unless Ethiopia stops its “invasion” of neighbouring Somalia.
Islamist sources say the movement is split between moderates pushing for talks and hardliners who believe they can win a military campaign against the fledgling administration.
The government told Fall it would return to Khartoum.
Anti-Islamist Ethiopia has repeatedly denied sending soldiers to defend the government, which is based in the small town of Baidoa because it is powerless to move to the capital.
However, UN envoy Fall said Ethiopian troops were indeed stationed in Baidoa, and another southern town, Wajid. But he but dismissed reports of 4 000 to 5 000 troops as exaggerated.
Diplomats fear that Ethiopia, and its old foe Eritrea, are using Somalia as a proxy battleground to antagonise each other.
There is little goodwill between the two neighbours who fought each other between 1998 to 2000 and dispute their border.
“Fundamentalists have been using Somalia as a springboard for several types of terrorist activities and all sorts of bombings in Ethiopia,” said Bereket Simon, a close adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. “And the involvement of the Eritrean government in Somalia’s turmoil worries us.”
Source: Reuters, July 26, 2006
