Posted on 09/23/2006 8:54:31 PM PDT by mdittmar
New York : 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 US official said on Friday.
In Somalia, Islamist forces moved closer to the strategic Somali port of Kismayo, although they denied any attempt to seize the city or expand their territorial gains in the south of the country.
The Islamists took the capital Mogadishu and a swathe of south Somalia earlier this year in a challenge to the Western-backed government's aspiration of restoring central rule for the first time since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, interviewed in New York, said the US ambassador in Kenya met this month with senior Islamist Shaikh Sharif Ahmad 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 said in an interview.
"The response was 'we don't know of any terrorists," she added.
The United States has no embassy in the Somalia and monitors developments there from its embassy in Kenya.
Frazer did not have the exact day of the meeting with Shaikh Sharif Ahmad, 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 US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya are there.
Residents of the southern port of Kismayo residents, meanwhile again braced for a possible attack.
Here we go again.
"We demand you give us your terrorists."
"No."
Hmmm...Mullah Omar, please pick up the white phone...
The u.n. has been meeting with the islamists,everything will be fine.
Exactly. We shouldn't be ASKING these savages for anything. We should be TELLING them that if they or any of their tribal goons ever attack a US asset in Africa, such as an embassy, we will flatten that dirt clod they call a country. Speak a language they actually understand.
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