Somali Jihadist Leader Rejects Talks with Gov't

MOGADISHU,somalia- A senior Somali Jihadist leader rejected on Sunday an offer of talks by the interim government to end insurgent attacks, including beheadings, that have sparked one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said last Wednesday his government was ready to negotiate with opposition groups to end a 15-month insurgency against government troops and their Ethiopian military allies.Calling for international mediation led by the United Nations' special envoy to Somalia, Hussein said the government was willing to hold talks in any location to end fighting that local aid groups said had killed 6,500 people last year.Jihadist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys dismissed the offer, saying his sharia courts movement and its fighters did not recognise the government of the war-ruined country."This is not a government. We believe they are people who brought the enemy forces to our country. They are criminals," Aweys, a hardline Jihadist, told Reuters in an interview."Our fight is against Ethiopia and as long as they are there Somalis cannot have dialogue," he said by phone from Eritrea, where he is living in exile after fleeing Somalia last year.Aweys who is United States terror list ,linked to al Qaeda, Jihadist aways said he is "freedom fighters"??.
"The country is under Ethiopian colonisation and must be liberated from the enemy," Many Somalis living in the shell-shattered capital fear the Jihadist refusal to accept talks unless historic foe Ethiopia withdraws its troops signals more attacks which are already forcing some 20,000 civilians to flee Mogadishu every month.Jihadist insurgents spreading terror by cutting the heads off three Somali soldiers last week.The head of the U.N. refugee agency told Reuters last Thursday that Somalia's problem was "intractable" with no sign of improvement. Guillermo Bettocchi said Somalia was a "negelected crisis" which surpassed Sudan's Darfur region.Jihadist Sheikh Aweys led Somalia's terror group Islamic Courts Council, which ruled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia in the second half of 2006, before it was ousted by allied Somali-Ethiopian forces.The remnants of Aweys' terror group are behind an Iraq-style insurgency punctuated with roadside bombings, assassinations and grenade attacks in somalia today.