Somali opposition alliance elects leaders - AP

MOGADISHU, Somalia:
A Somali opposition alliance will be led by an Islamic courts leader and a former parliamentary speaker, a spokesman announced on Thursday.
Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the former chairman of the executive council of Islamic Courts, was elected the new chairman of the Somali opposition alliance and Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden, the ousted parliamentary speaker, as chairman of the alliance's 191-member central committee, Sheik Yusuf Ainte, a delegate the alliance meeting, told the Associated Press by phone.

The new Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia was formed Wednesday in Eritrea, a tiny Horn of Africa nation that is the archrival of Ethiopia. Last December, Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to help the Somali government retake the capital.

The alliance's formation was the culmination of a six-day meeting between dissidents expelled from the Somali parliament, civil society figures, expatriate Somalis and an Islamic group that controlled the Somali capital until being ousted by Ethiopian troops late last year. The group was formed in response to an official government-organized reconciliation conference held in the capital of Mogadishu which ended two weeks ago.

Its first action was to issue a two-week ultimatum for Ethiopian troops to withdraw from Somalia, raising the specter of more violence in the faction-riven Horn of Africa nation.

Much of Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when rival warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. The current government, which is backed by the U.N. and neighboring Ethiopia, has struggled to assert control and has been attacked by insurgents almost daily since December, when it toppled the Islamic group from power in Mogadishu and much of the south of the country.
Islamic fighters vowed to fight an Iraq-style insurgency and the U.N. says they are receiving weapons from Eritrea. On Saturday, a top U.S. official said Eritrea could be added to the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, in part because Somali Islamic leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on U.S. and U.N. lists of terrorism suspects, attended the opposition conference.

Fighting between the Islamic extremists and the transitional government is complicated by a web of clan loyalties. Many powerful Somali figures command private militias, with fighters who believe their leaders' alliances are more important than ideology.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in fighting in the south of the country.
The involvement of Eritrea and Ethiopia is a further complication. Eritrea fought a bloody war for independence from Ethiopia that ended in 1993 and another war over a border dispute from 1998-2000. Tensions between the two remain high, and they may see Somalia as a proxy battleground. Ethiopia is seen by many American officials as an important ally in the war on terrorism.
On Thursday, Bereket Simon, a special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, dismissed the alliance, saying, "It's not a new thing; it's not an unusual thing that happened. The Eritrean government has continued to harbor terrorists. It's the usual practice by the Eritrean government that they are helping these terrorists...We will definitely make sure that these terrorist groups will not come to Somalia."
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Anita Powell - Addis Ababa
Source: AP