German official claims Somalia next U.S. target in terrorism wa

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- A senior German official said Wednesday that the United States had marked war-ravaged Somalia as the next target in its global fight against Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the report was "flat wrong."

The German official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it is no longer a question of whether to go after al-Qaida in Somalia, but only when and how. That account was quickly denied in Washington.

"The German was wrong. He didn't mean to be, and he's probably sorry, but he was flat wrong," Rumsfeld said.

In Brussels, Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Somalia is a potential target, but refused to discuss whether it was in America's future military plans.

"We are not going to speculate on any next operation," Myers said in a meeting with journalists in Brussels.

Other countries

"Countries that harbor terrorists worry us," he added. "Somalia is one potential country, but there are others as well."

At Tuesday's meeting in Brussels of NATO defense ministers, Rumsfeld mentioned Yemen and Sudan as countries suspected of supporting terrorism. Iraq also has been identified by President Bush and other senior administration officials as a potential target.

Glen Warren, a U.S. diplomat who follows Somali affairs from the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, in neighboring Kenya, arrived Wednesday on a rare official visit to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, to meet with government and factional leaders. He said his trip was "mainly concentrating on America's war against international terrorism."

Somalia, a country ravaged by a decade of clan warfare, is home to the Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, or "Islamic Union," a fundamentalist group that has been linked to al-Qaida. A weak transitional government headed by President Abdiqasim Salat Hassan took over last year, but it has never been recognized by the United States and has little influence outside Mogadishu.

Earlier this month, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner, told reporters in Nairobi that the Bush administration believes there are links between Al-Itihaad and the transitional government.

But Somalia's transport minister, Abdi Guled Mohamed, said Wednesday that the government wanted to be an ally of the United States in the war on terrorism.

"We have said since Sept. 11 that we want to help. If the Americans say there are terrorists in Somalia, they should tell us how they know this," he said in Nairobi.

where he was attending peace talks between Somali faction leaders and the transitional government.

"If there are terrorists there, than we will put them in prison, put them where they belong. We will work with the Americans to fight terrorists," he said.

U.S. officials have been meeting with government and opposition officials in recent weeks to discuss terrorism. In early December, nine people identified by aid workers and a regional security official as Americans visited a town in western Somalia in early December and met with local faction leaders and Ethiopian military officers.

The Americans met with leaders of the Rahanwein Resistance Army, a clan-based faction opposed to Somalia's government, and with Mohamed Saeed Hirsi, the leader of an Ethiopian-backed faction also opposed to the government.

Al-Itihaad is believed to have formed in the late 1980s, recruiting university students in Mogadishu. When the country sank into chaos after faction leaders who had united to oust President Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991 turned on each other, al-Itihaad followed suite and formed an armed militia. In 1992 the group moved south out of Mogadishu to the port of Merca. After mid-1993, not much more was heard about al-Itihaad until 1996, when Ethiopia claimed that al-Itihaad members had tried to kill Transport Minister Abdulmejid Hussein, an ethnic Somali.

Ethiopia claimed that al-Itihaad was responsible for attacks on hotels in Addis Ababa and in late 1996 and early 1997 and began incursions into Somalia in pursuit of the group.