Somali flare-up pits three African "dogs of war"

NAIROBI, Dec 26 (Reuters) Three wily old soldiers who know each other only too well from years at the heart of conflict and power-play across the Horn of Africa are once again pitting their military wits in the Somalia war.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, his ally Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, and their mutual arch-foe -- Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys -- are the key players in a flare-up many fear could spread across the region.

''These three have a long and tangled history. They can probably read each other's minds by now,'' said a Western diplomat who tracks Somalia.

''What they all share is plenty of battlefield experience. And you really could call them three of the Horn of Africa's oldest dogs of war.'' Meles, who has sent his military into Somalia to curb the rise of a militant Islamist movement, is a 54-year-old former rebel leader who toppled dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.

The shrewd and tough Ethiopian leader -- initially a darling of the West but increasingly viewed as an autocrat -- first sent troops into Somalia in the early 1990s to crush Islamic militants, led by Aweys no less.

Meles then fought what many outside the region perceived as a pointless 1998-2000 war with Eritrea over a desolate patch of border. The conflict killed 70,000 people and devastated what were already two of the world's poorest nations.

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