Amerikai szakértők vizitelnének a szomáli iszlámistáknál.

UN security team to visit Somali Islamist group

A U.N. security team plans to visit Somalia's Islamist leaders in the world body's first contact with the militant group that controls much of the northeast African country, a U.N. official said on Monday.

Francois Lonseny Fall, the special U.N. envoy for Somalia, told a news conference his team would leave this week for the Somalia town of Jowhar, one of the towns captured by the Islamists last Wednesday.

Fall said the main purpose of the U.N. team in Jowhar, 60 miles (96 kms) northeast of the capital Mogadishu, was to "see how we open the roads for humanitarian access to humanitarian agencies."

The militants, known as the Islamic Courts Union, base their movement on Sharia or Islamic law and are the closest thing to a government on the ground Somalia has had in 15 years of in-fighting among clan-based secular warlords.

The African Union and United Nations support a transitional federal government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa.

That administration, the 14th bid to restore central rule to Somalia since the 1991 ousting of Mohamed Siad Barre, has been unable to enter Mogadishu.

The Islamists, who control a swathe of southern Somalia after pushing into other towns from Mogadishu, have asked for dialogue with the interim government.

Fall spoke to reporters after briefing the 15-nation U.N. Security Council, which is struggling with a statement on Somalia.

But council diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no decision had been made on whether to support the African Union's push for peacekeepers in Somalia, in part to protect the transitional government.

Two council envoys, reporting on the closed-door meeting, said the United States and others felt it was too early for peacekeepers because there was no political peace to support.

The Security Council would have to lift an arms embargo before foreign troops could legally enter the country.

The African Union also plans a mission to Somalia before deciding whether to deploy peacekeepers there.

Fall told reporters he had warned the council it had to speak with one voice and take action to protect the interim government in Baidoa.

"Everything is now in play in Somalia," Fall said.
"We don't know exactly what is their intention and that's why the first mission is going now to Jowhar."



The United States, which has been supporting some of the warlords, fears the Islamist movement is harboring al Qaeda operatives or other terror suspects.


Formed within clans during the late 1990s, the Islamic Court Union won popularity by bringing a semblance of order to anarchic Mogadishu.


Islamists from the wealthier and more moderate Abgal clan, led by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed Ahmed and his business supporters, have the upper hand at the moment.


But others from the more radical Ayr clan, such as Sheikh Yusuf Indahabde who runs the southern Merca region, are an important component of the Islamist leadership.


Somalia, one of the poorest nations in the world, needs an injection of $326 million to stave off famine, U.N. officials reported earlier.


More than 2 million people out of an estimated population