Somalia blames U.S. for funding Mogadishu warlords

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04597491.htm

NAIROBI, May 4 (Reuters) - The United States is funding a coalition of Somali warlords fighting hardline Islamic militia in the capital Mogadishu as part of Washington's declared war on terrorism, a Somali government spokesman said on Thursday.

Some 90 people were killed in March in battles between fighters linked to the influential Islamic courts and those tied to a self-styled anti-terrorism coalition in Mogadishu, comprising most of the capital's powerful warlords.

It was the worst violence in Somalia in years.

"The U.S. government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that," spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told Reuters by telephone from Baidoa, a provincial town where the interim Somali government is based.

"The warlords, through U.S support, have caused so many deaths of innocent civilians in the recent fighting in Mogadishu," he said.

"This co-operation ... only fuels further civil war."

[acmavm]

1. That's our government. Finance anyone will to kill Muslims. So

what if innocent civilians die? So what if it fuels a civil war? At least there a few more dead Moslems in the world. That's all that's important, eh george?