Somalia Militants Warn of Possible War

A banner is displayed during a protest in Mogadishu, Somalia, Monday, Dec 4, 2006. Hundreds of people demonstrated at Mogadishu Stadium in a protest against the U.S. proposed draft U.N. resolution on easing an arms embargo on Somalia. The angry demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans and carried banners and placards denouncing the U.S. proposals that could also allow regional peacekeeping troops to go to Somalia. (AP Photo/Mohamed Sheikh Nur) (Mohamed Sheikh Nur - AP)

The resolution also urged the Islamic militants, who control the capital of Mogadishu, to stop any further military expansion and join the transitional government in peace talks. The government controls just one town, Baidoa, in the southwestern part of the country.

Somalia's Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said the resolution should be implemented immediately, but getting troops on the ground was expected to take months.

"International terrorists, opportunists are using some Somali people in order to destabilize our country and the region," Gedi told journalists in Kenya's capital, Nairobi.

The growing tension in Somalia, which has not had an effective government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, threatens to erupt into a regional war.

A confidential U.N. report obtained recently by the AP said 6,000-8,000 Ethiopian troops were in Somalia or along the border, supporting the transitional government. It also said 2,000 soldiers from Eritrea were inside Somalia, supporting the Islamic militia _ which Eritrea denies.

Ethiopia supported the U.N. resolution but said it had come late.

"It would have been better if they had approved it nearly two years ago when it was originally proposed," said Wahide Belay, acting spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu, meanwhile, denounced the U.N. resolution as an "attack on the Somali people." He also said it provided support for just one warlord, an indirect reference to Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's past as one of the country's major warlords.

The authorized force "is not a peacekeeping force, it is an invasion keeping force," Abdu told Al-Jazeera television.

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Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Malkhadir Muhumed in Nairobi, Kenya, Katy Pownall in Kampala, Uganda, and Les Neuhaus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed to this report.