| Home | Politics | Human Rights | Water | Economy | Education | Sci & Tech | Culture | Sport |
Addis Ababa, March 19, 2008 (Addis Ababa) - Prime Minister Meles Zenawi here on Wednesday held talks with Philip H. Greene, Jr. Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy Commander, Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa.
A senior government official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who attended the discussion, told journalists that the two parties exchanged views on security affairs in the Horn of Africa.
They also discussed on current situations in Somalia and the Ethio-Eritrea border dispute.
Rear Admiral Greene on his part said the discussion with the Prime Minister was fruitful.
19 March, 2008
MOGADISHU (AFP) - Somalia's Islamist insurgents are honoured to have been included on the United States' blacklist of terrorist organisations, a senior official from the militant group said Wednesday.
"We are very pleased by the decision of the United States to put us on their list of so-called terrorists," Mohamed Ali, a senior member of the Shabab organisation told AFP in Mogadishu.
"The freedom fighters of Kashmir, the heroic people of Palestine and the liberation army of Chechnya are all on the so-called US list of terrorist organisations," he said.
The US state department on Tuesday announced it had added the Shabab to its list of terrorist organisations, describing it as a "violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with Al-Qaeda".
Officially, the Shabab is the youth branch of the Islamic Courts Union which briefly controlled large parts of the Horn of Africa country before being ousted by government troops and the Ethiopian army last year.
While the Islamists' political leadership has scattered into exile, fighters from the Shabab have stayed behind, mainly in the capital Mogadishu, to wage a deadly insurgency against Ethiopian, Somali and African Union forces.
Somalia's fragile transitional government praised the decision to add the Shabab to the US list of terrorist organisations.
"That is the place they deserve, they are terrorists and the government is happy the US has understood what we have been saying for a long time," a senior Somali government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"The move will exclude the Shabab from any deal and bolster our effort to bring peace," he said, describing the movement's fighters as "agents of Al-Qaeda in the region".
In a notable break from the line adopted by previous governments, Somalia's newly-appointed Prime Minister Hassan Hussein Nur last week said he was "now ready to talk to anyone".
He outlined a national reconciliation plan to end more than 16 years of almost uninterrupted civil conflict in the Horn of Africa country.
The premier said he would work on solving disputes between feuding clans inside Somalia and later engage opposition groups, most of which are grouped under an umbrella organisation based in Eritrea.