September 22, 2006
By Sue Pleming
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The United States held a direct meeting in recent weeks with a key Islamist leader from Somalia and demanded the handover of “terrorists” believed to be in Mogadishu, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, said the U.S. ambassador in Kenya met this month with senior Islamist Sheikh Sharif Ahmed while in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
“It was just normal diplomacy, we opened a channel to talk to them about the fact that we know that there are terrorists residing in Mogadishu and they needed to turn them over,” Frazer told Reuters in an interview.
“The response was ‘we don’t know of any terrorists,” she added.
The United States does not have an embassy in the war-torn African country and monitors developments there from its embassy in Kenya.
Frazer did not have the exact day of the meeting with Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, whom she said represented the more moderate face of the Islamists who seized power in Mogadishu last June,
The United States believes Somalia has become a safe haven for terrorist groups and Frazer said Washington thinks at least three of the plotters behind the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya are there.
Washington has been debating whether to deal directly with the Islamists instead of supporting the weak transitional government in Baidoa.
Frazer said Washington was still trying to establish who controlled the Islamists.
The United States has said it would not deal with cleric Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on a U.N. list of al Qaeda associates and heads the Council of the Islamic Courts.
Developing out of Sharia courts that sprang up in lawless Mogadishu in the mid-1990s, the Islamist movement developed into a strong political and military force before taking over Mogadishu and a southern swathe of the country in June.
While Somalis have welcomed more security in areas seized by the Islamists, many are concerned by signs of fundamentalist practices such as enforcing dress codes.
The Islamists have written several letters to the United States and the United Nations and recently sent several envoys around the world to try to allay fears that the Sharia law they envisage would result in a Taliban-style rule.
Frazer said the Islamists had been asking the United States for a while for direct discussions and the Khartoum meeting provided this opportunity.
Source: Reuters, Sept 22, 2006
