Somali Islamists say US terror listing forms unity

Islamist insurgents in Somalia say their inclusion on a United States terrorism list will help recruiting and has spurred them to strengthen ties with other groups blacklisted by Washington.

"We were not terrorists," says rebel commander Mukhtar Ali Robow. "But now we've been designated, we have been forced to seek out and unite with any Muslims on the list against the United States," he said late on Thursday.

US officials say Robow's al Shabaab, the militant wing of a sharia courts group that ruled most of southern Somalia for the second half of 2006, is closely affiliated with Al Qaeda.

This week, the US government designated it a terrorist organisation alongside groups like Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Somalia's western-backed interim government and its Ethiopian military allies have faced an Iraq-style insurgency of assassinations, grenade attacks and roadside bombings since they routed the Islamic courts group from the capital in December 2006. It wants a full-scale United Nations peacekeeping mission to help it fend off the rebels and relieve an under-funded African Union force of just 2 600 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi.

The top UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, told Security Council members yesterday that they had a clear responsibility to get involved in a country where there were widespread abuses of human rights and humanitarian law.

The council's 15 members agree things are dire, but many are reluctant to send UN troops to a place of bitter memories of the "Black Hawk Down" battle in 1993 that effectively wrecked a US/UN peace mission. - Reuters