Nairobi, Kenya (CNSNews.com) - As Islamist forces expand their hold in Somalia and confirm that a man linked to terrorism will be their new leader, neighboring Ethiopia is deploying additional armed forces on its side of their shared border, worried about threats to regional security.

The Islamic Court Union (ICU) on Thursday ratified an earlier decision to name Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys as its supreme leader, and on the same day declared its intention to rule all of Somalia, not just the Mogadishu area.

The moves dealt a blow to any hopes in the West that the ICU may follow a more moderate course and be amenable to negotiations. Aweys is on a U.S. terrorist list, wants Somalia to be subjected to Islamic law (shari'a), and rejects any plan to send international peacekeepers into the country.

ICU forces seized Mogadishu early this month after defeating a coalition of warlords and businessmen.

The Islamists' bid to now control the entire country also challenges the authority of the largely-toothless transitional government headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf, and based in the town of Baidoa because of instability in the capital.

The government of Ethiopia, which supports Yusuf's administration, said this week it was beefing up security along its border with Somalia. It has also vowed to defend the transitional government in Baidoa against any possible attack.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi accused the ICU of being involved in a recent wave of bombings in his country's capital, Addis Ababa.

In the 1990s, Aweys was leader of al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, an al-Qaeda-linked faction held responsible for an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya and attempts to shoot down an Israeli passenger, also in Kenya, in 2002.

The conflict monitoring body International Crisis Group (ICG) says that since 2003, Islamists have been linked to the murders of Somalis and foreigners.

The Islamist government of Sudan last week hosted talks between the ICU and Somalia's transitional government, at which the parties agreed for a ceasefire.

But the deal was broken this week when the ICU attacked a warlord militia stronghold south of Mogadishu.

"The problem of Somalia is no longer the problem of Somalia alone," Abdikarin Farah, the transitional government's envoy to the African Union (A.U.) told reporters in Addis Ababa. "It is going to be a regional problem now - insecurity, extremism," he warned.

Somalia analyst Aden Mohamed said here the recent developments were sending out alarm bells in the region.

Nations in the Horn of Africa regarded the elevation of Aweys and the ICU's expansionist goal "as a major security threat to their borders and will in one way or the other become more aggressively involved," he predicted.

Somalia shares borders with Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti . The country has the longest coastline in Africa stretching from near the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa to the Gulf of Aden, across from Yemen.
The Kenyan government is also concerned about the situation in Somalia. A Kenyan official told a U.N. conference on small arms in New York City that the international community would have to help Somalia build government institutions in an inclusive manner if peace was to be realized there.

The A.U. wants peacekeepers deployed in Somalia to help the government build strong administrative and security structures, and prevent the conflict from destabilizing the broader region.

But the peacekeeping move has been delayed, the African body says, because a U.N. arms embargo imposed on Somalia in 1992 remains in place.

South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, who chairs the A.U.'s peace and security council, urged the U.N. to lift the ban, saying doing so would help the transitional government build institutions like the police.

But the peacekeeping initiative is not just being held up because of the embargo. The rise of the Islamists has complicated the situation further, because the ICU has vowed to attack any peacekeeping force that may be sent in.



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