By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN
The Associated Press
Thursday, December 7, 2006; 9:14 PM

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Islamic militants in control of most of southern Somalia warned Thursday that war will erupt over a U.N. decision authorizing an African force to protect the country's virtually powerless government.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the resolution Wednesday, hoping to restore peace in Somalia and avert a broader conflict in the region. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedis welcomed the decision and urged its immediate implementation.

The resolution also partially lifts a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia so the regional force can be supplied with weapons and military equipment and train the government's security forces.

But a spokesman for the Islamic movement said the resolution will introduce sophisticated weapons into Somalia and provoke a war between his group and the government.

"We see the approval of the resolution as nothing but an evil intention," Abdirahin Ali Mudey, spokesman for the Islamic Courts, told The Associated Press.

Mudey accused the Security Council of giving the Somali government's main ally, Ethiopia, permission to occupy the country, and said his movement would now reconsider attending peace talks with the government scheduled for later this month.

"The international community has proven to be biased and unjust," he said.

The resolution bans Somalia's neighbors _ Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya _ from sending soldiers. In a possible indication that countries may be hesitant to contribute forces, Uganda said it may hold off until the security situation improves. Deputy Defense Minister Ruth Nankabirwa said the situation had changed since Uganda first backed the peacekeeping proposal in January 2005.

It is the only country thus far to volunteer troops to the force.

"It may be that we will think of holding off until the terrain is not so hostile for Ugandan forces," she said, although she called the lifting of the arms embargo "a first step."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned the situation has to be handled very carefully.

"I would hope that those who are going to be sending in troops will find a way of engaging the Somali parties, to let them know that they are coming there to help them to stabilize the situation, to help their people, and they are not coming in as an invasion force of any kind," he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

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.