Somali govt rejects quick peace talks resumption

KHARTOUM, Nov 2 (Reuters) Somalia's government ruled out today a quick resumption of stalled talks with rival Islamists as both sides made military preparations and diplomats urged a strong international effort to avert a disastrous war.

''The government delegation has refused to set a date and a place,'' delegation member Ahmed Omar Gagale told Reuters of a plan by mediators to persuade the two sides to continue negotiations in Khartoum on Nov 15.

Both sides are blaming each other for the failure of a third round of Arab League-sponsored talks seen as the best way to avert a conflict which could widen into a disastrous Horn of Africa war by involving foes Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The Islamists, who took Mogadishu and a swathe of south Somalia in June, say they cannot talk while Ethiopian troops are on Somali soil to help President Abdullahi Yusuf's government. They have called for an international fact-finding mission.

The government says the Islamists, who have declared jihad on Addis Ababa, want to take Somalia by force and perhaps invade other ethnically Somali regions of neighbouring countries.

''These are people who want the area to explode,'' Foreign Minister Ismail Hurre Buba told Reuters in London.

There was no immediate comment from the Islamist side on the Nov. 15 proposal put forward by mediators and diplomats.

War would be a nightmare for inhabitants of the Horn of Africa, already among the world's poorest people and buffeted by successive conflicts in recent decades.

Somalia itself has been mired in anarchy since the 1991 ouster of a dictator by warlords. Eritrea, which is accused of arming the Islamists, and Ethiopia, which openly backs Yusuf's government, fought a war in 1998-2000 and remain bitter foes.

''The international community needs to act fast and clearly to avoid a disastrous war that could turn the region into an Iraq-style situation,'' another Western diplomat said.

''We should look for the tiniest shred of hope to avoid this prospect,'' he said, adding a plethora of international diplomatic initiatives on Somalia was hindering the process.

War in Somalia may draw in foreign Muslim radicals on the Islamists' side, analysts say, and would divert resources urgently needed for humanitarian aid and social services.

POSTURING? On the ground, Islamist sources said today the movement was sending more fighters to the flashpoint town of Buur Hakaba. It lies between the government's headquarters in Baidoa town and the Islamists' base in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Both sides have tested guns in recent days.

''Given the situation on the ground, the proximity of the forces and the artillery duels of the last few days, an escalation is likely,'' regional analyst Matt Bryden said.

''It could be hours, it could be days, it could be weeks.'' Others, however, felt that despite an inevitable military build-up, the heightened war talk may be a bluff.

''How real is the wish of the two parties to go into war?'' the diplomat said. ''The fact the talks didn't completely collapse but were sort of re-scheduled points to the fact that we are still on a heavy posturing position.'' Borne out of sharia courts in Mogadishu, the Islamist movement's rise dented the Yusuf government's aspirations to restore central rule for the first time since 1991.

Despite its military inferiority to the Islamists, the government is backed by international institutions like the African Union, United Nations and east African body IGAD.

Perhaps more significantly, it has support from Horn of Africa regional power Ethiopia, which acknowledges sending hundreds of armed military trainers to Baidoa.

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