Ethiopian Prime Minister gives mixed signals on Somalia

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has declared "mission accomplished" in Somalia, and told his parliament that Ethiopia's controversial two-year military mission there will end within weeks. At the same time however, Mr. Meles declared that Ethiopian troops would remain in Somalia in order to guarantee the safe withdrawal of African Union (AU) peacekeepers, whom he claimed were eager to end their mission, a claim that AU leadership vehemently denies. The Ethiopian leader cast aside their failure to contain the popular insurgency led by the Islamist al-Shabab forces by saying that that was not Ethiopia's objective. Instead, he claimed success in preventing the establishment of a militant Islamic regime, declaring that if the shaky interim government is in fact overthrown "we can take action." He also claimed success in "giving the international community and Somali peace forces time to accomplish their mission of bringing lasting peace to Somalia," but based his claim of success on having endured for two years, while admitting that "unfortunately, it has not been possible to bring lasting peace to Somalia." Mr. Zanawi further claimed that the AU forces, comprised primarily of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, "might like to withdraw", and that they had requested that Ethiopian troops delay their departure until after that withdrawal was completed. But neither Uganda nor Burundi has given any public indication that it wants to withdraw its troops, and Uganda's foreign minister said Mr. Zanawi's assertion is "absolutely not true". Diplomats said it would take months to replace the several-thousand Ethiopian troops, much less to bring the AMISOM force up to its authorized strength of 8,000, or to transform it to a more robust U.N. peacekeeping mission. If Mr. Zenawi does withdraw his troops, according to the BBC, Somalia would be facing what the AU Commission has described as "the worst possible scenario".