http://www.boston.com/dailynews/346/world/U_S_concerned_about_terrorist_:.shtml

U.S. concerned about terrorist activity in Somalia

By Dina Kraft, Associated Press, 12/12/2001 14:54

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) The United States is concerned about possible terrorist activity in Somalia and is intent on ensuring the East African country does not become a haven for terrorists, Washington's top official on Africa said Wednesday.

''The possibility of terror cells being in Somalia is real,'' visiting Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner told reporters in Pretoria, the last stop on his four-nation tour that also took him to Ethiopia, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

A Somali faction leader opposed to that country's transitional government acknowledged Wednesday that he met this week with a U.S. military delegation to Somalia.

''We have been continuously consulting since the September terrorist attacks on the United States with representatives of the U.S., the Ethiopian and Kenyan governments on the terrorist networks run by Al-Itihaad and al-Qaida,'' Hussein Mohamed Aidid told reporters. ''The visit by the American delegation is a continuation of that consultation.''

Aidid is a member of the Ethiopian-backed Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council, a group of faction leaders who oppose the transitional government of President Abdiqasim Salat Hassan and accuse it of having ties to Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya, a Muslim fundamentalist organization that appeared on a Bush administration list of 22 terrorist organizations issued Dec. 6.

Kansteiner did not comment about the U.S. delegation's trip to Somalia and did not say whether the United States was considering strikes against the war-wracked nation as part of the anti-terror campaign begun in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Kansteiner said Washington believes there are links between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, and Al-Itihaad, a militant Somali group, and that Washington wanted those links severed.

In 1992, the United State sent troops into Somalia to protect food deliveries to Somalis caught up in the factional fighting that erupted after the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

The last of the American troops were hastily withdrawn in late 1993 after 18 were killed in a botched operation to capture aides of a faction leader.

Al-Qaida is also believed to be operating in Sudan and Kansteiner said cooperation between U.S. and Sudanese officials had increased since the attacks.

Kansteiner, who arrived in South Africa after four days in Zimbabwe, said there was still time to make sure that upcoming presidential elections in the troubled country would be free and fair.

He warned, however, that ''time is running out.''

Zimbabwe has been plagued by political violence since March 2000, when militants began violently seizing white-owned farms a program sanctioned by the government in a bid to shore up its waning popularity.

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2001