MOGADISHU, July 24 (Reuters) – Somali legislators urged Ethiopian troops to leave their country on Monday in a first recognition from within the Horn of Africa’s interim authorities of a military incursion by its neighbour.
“Ethiopian troops should get out of Somalia as soon as possible and should cease from the constant aggression against Somalia,” said a statement signed by 16 lawmakers.
“This move is a clear interference against the freedom and sovereignty of Somalia,” it added.
Somalia’s newly powerful Islamist movement says Addis Ababa has moved several thousand troops into the country, a charge bolstered by eye-witness accounts and believed by most regional diplomats and experts.
Ethiopia supports the interim Somali government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa, but fiercely opposes the Islamists — who recently took Mogadishu — as “terrorists.”
Addis Ababa has repeatedly denied sending soldiers across the border to defend Somalia’s interim government, but has threatened to “crush” any Islamist attack on the government.
The group of legislators urged the international community to put pressure on Addis Ababa to withdraw its troops to prevent further insecurity in the Horn of Africa region.
It was not clear where the lawmakers’ allegiances lay, although some were believed to be Islamist sympathisers and their presence in Mogadishu seemed to support that.
The statement gave no indication of the location or the size of the Ethiopian forces.
Source: Reuters, July 24, 2006
