Ethiopia denies allowing U.S. attacks

[maddezmom]

MOGADISHU, Somalia - An Ethiopian official denied Friday a report in the New York Times that U.S. troops used Ethiopia as a staging ground for attacks against al-Qaida leaders in Somalia last month.

"This is simply a total fabrication," Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told The Associated Press.

The Times report, published Friday, cited unnamed American sources officials from several U.S. agencies with a hand in Somalia policy as saying the U.S. soldiers used an airstrip in Ethiopia to mount strikes against Islamic militants in Somalia.

The report went on to say that the U.S. and Ethiopia relationship included the sharing of intelligence on the militants.

more;http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070223/ap_on_re_af/somalia

U.S. Used Bases in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The American military quietly waged a campaign from Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, including the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia, according to American officials.

The close and largely clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant sharing of intelligence on the Islamic militants’ positions and information from American spy satellites with the Ethiopian military. Members of a secret American Special Operations unit, Task Force 88, were deployed in Ethiopia and Kenya, and ventured into Somalia, the officials said.

The counterterrorism effort was described by American officials as a qualified success that disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia, led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants and involved a collaborative relationship with Ethiopia that had been developing for years.

But the tally of the dead and captured does not as yet include some Qaeda leaders — including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam — whom the United States has hunted for their suspected roles in the attacks on American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. With Somalia still in a chaotic state, and American and African officials struggling to cobble together a peacekeeping force for the war-ravaged country, the long-term effects of recent American operations remain unclear.
more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/world/africa/23somalia.html?ref=world

[xchrom]

1. ...

''But the tally of the dead and captured does not as yet include some Qaeda leaders''

because this is an admin that lashes out without thinking or regard for real strategy and information.

they just want to see in the headlines that bombs went off somewhere which will be labeled later as an attack on al qaida.

[izzie]

2. I wonder if the Times was right?

I read that but I guess I will have to wait a few years to see what happened.