Militiamen Close In on Key Somali City

MOGADISHU, Somalia, July 19 -- The Islamic militiamen who control most of southern Somalia deployed hundreds of fighters Wednesday outside the city where the U.N.-backed interim government is based and said they planned to seize it.

Capturing Baidoa would make the Islamic militia the uncontested authority over most of the country.

Neighboring Ethiopia said it was prepared to invade Somalia to defend the interim government.

"We have the responsibility to defend the border and the Somali government. We will crush them," said Ethiopia's minister of information, Berhan Hailu.

The interim government was on high alert and ready to defend itself from a militia attack, Deputy Information Minister Salad Ali Jelle said. The government, however, is virtually powerless and has been unable to exert control beyond Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of the capital, Mogadishu.

The militiamen seized Mogadishu last month and have installed increasingly strict religious rule that has sparked fears of a Taliban-style government in this anarchic Horn of Africa country. The United States has accused the militia of having links to al-Qaeda that include sheltering suspects named in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Osama bin Laden has called Somalia a front in his global war against the United States and its allies.

"Nothing will stop us from going into Baidoa," said Muqtar Robow, deputy defense chief for the Islamic group. He said more than 130 fighters loyal to the interim government's president, Abdullahi Yusuf, had defected to the side of the Islamic militias.

A lower-ranking Islamic official denied that fighters were planning to seize Baidoa, offering a different explanation for why the militiamen were on the city's outskirts.

"Our aim of going to the region is to convince people in the region to implement Islamic law and establish Islamic courts," said Mohamed Ibrahim Bilal, head of a local militia.

Already tense relations between the government and the Islamic militiamen were strained further after the government accused the Islamic group of planning to attack Baidoa, of receiving help from foreign terrorists and of massacring government supporters during recent fighting in Mogadishu.

The government said last week that it would boycott talks scheduled for this Saturday in Sudan, saying the militiamen had killed civilians and were growing increasingly radical. But officials appeared to be reconsidering under pressure from foreign governments pushing for a unified Somali administration.

The status of the talks was thrown into uncertainty by the deployments Wednesday.